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Filed 23h ago · Via The Conversation · The Buffoon Desk

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Matt's Blues

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Matti Blume · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A federal watchdog reports that cannabis businesses in states where it's legal still struggle to get basic banking, despite 2014 guidance from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network meant to let banks serve them legally. Since cannabis remains federally illegal, banks that serve these businesses face compliance costs and legal risk under the Bank Secrecy Act.

GAO found the number of institutions filing suspicious activity reports on cannabis businesses grew from 2015 to 2019 and has held roughly steady since, with about 1,000 banks and credit unions filing such reports in 2024. Meanwhile, business owners report account closures, high fees, steep loan rates, and difficulty even accepting customer card payments since two major credit card companies bar cannabis purchases outright.

The report is based on interviews and focus groups with 74 financial institutions and 51 cannabis businesses, and finds owners and their employees also face personal banking troubles simply for working in the industry.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Ten years of federal guidance and the workaround is still a workaround. A cannabis shop owner who's fully legal under state law can't run a credit card the normal way, which is the kind of contradiction that only makes sense if you never expect anyone to actually try living inside it. The government wrote a permission slip in 2014 and left the actual plumbing for somebody else to figure out.

Source: Read the original at The Conversation → Scored: Matt's Blues · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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