Leafly asked Steve Kemmerling to share his perspective on banking the cannabis industry. Kemmerling, a former mergers and acquisitions investment banker, is the founder of MRB Monitor, a consulting firm that advises banks, credit unions and other financial institutions about handling marijuana related businesses (or in banking parlance, MRBs).

Kemmerling suggests:

• High compliance costs for banks serving the industry are a huge impediment
• Banking the cannabis industry, even if federally legal, will be about as popular as banking pawnshops and gun dealers
• The Fourth Corner Credit Union would have been challenged even if cannabis were federally legal
• Alternative payment systems aren’t likely to succeed
• Washington sets a good example as a state trying to help the industry

Read Bruce Barcott’s “View From the Pinstripes: How a Banker Sees a Cannabis Account”: https://www.leafly.com/news/industry/view-from-the-pinstripes-how-a-banker-sees-a-cannabis-account

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