At last week’s Arcview Group investor meeting in Toronto, mobile payments platform Tokken narrowly edged out Province Brands and Bloom Automation in the organization’s closest pitch contest to date. Lamine Zarrad, CEO and founder, shared Tokken’s story on the stage with judges Sam Znaimer, Renee Gagnon and Patrick Moran. Matt Shalhoub of Green Acre Capital served as Mentor to Tokken.

Tokken, which provides a sustainable banking solution by using an indelible blockchain ledger, has assembled a team with expertise in banking, intelligence, counter-terrorism, and payment systems. Its processing system, similar to Paypal, allows consumers to download the app and make payments. Businesses are able to use Tokken for online banking, and Zarrad described its back-end, Gestalt, as being the key to the company’s technology that creates complete accountability. The company has also partnered with Microsoft to create a blockchain-based machine learning engine.

Tokken has accomplished a great deal since its 2016 formation, including raising $1.8mm, launching in beta at four locations in Denver and filing for a patent. In beta, it experienced 5100 downloads and processed $497K in transactions over 172 days, representing 35% of transactions during the time-frame. While the company has been actively developing  partnerships with Point-of-Sale systems providers and delivery and pre-order services, it is also getting referrals from companies like First Data and Worldpay, which can’t directly serve cannabis companies. Tokken currently charges merchants transaction fees, but it intends to charge a licensing fee to access its software for anti-money laundering applications that extend beyond cannabis. Zarrad concluded his presentation by explaining the $3mm capital raise as allowing the company to “scale massively” after its successful beta.

Arcview Group will host its next event in West Palm Beach, Florida on September 18-20. Accredited investors interested in attending or in accessing its weekly webinars with the most promising cannabis companies can learn more about Arcview and its investor network group.

Exclusive article by Alan Brochstein, CFA

Based in Houston, Alan leverages his experience as founder of online community 420 Investor, the first and still largest due diligence platform focused on the publicly-traded stocks in the cannabis industry. With his extensive network in the cannabis community, Alan continues to find new ways to connect the industry and facilitate its sustainable growth. At New Cannabis Ventures, he is responsible for content development and strategic alliances. Before shifting his focus to the cannabis industry in early 2013, Alan, who began his career on Wall Street in 1986, worked as an independent research analyst following over two decades in research and portfolio management. A prolific writer, with over 650 articles published since 2007 at Seeking Alpha, where he has 70,000 followers, Alan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a frequent source to the media, including the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, and Bloomberg TV. Contact Alan: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email