Meet The Fintech Startup Powering The Cannabis Industry

Forbes Daily Briefing

Forbes

Careers, Business, News, Entrepreneurship

4.6 • 12 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

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Summary

Green Check verifies $1 billion in legal marijuana sales every month through its banking compliance software. Inside the company that’s cashing in on an industry where cash is king.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Here is your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, October 21st.
0:05.0	Today on Forbes, meet the FinTech startup powering the cannabis industry.
0:11.0	In February 2016,
0:13.0	2016, Kevin Hart, the former CEO of Apple Computer Repair Outfit TechServe,
0:18.0	found himself standing inside in Oakland, California vault,
0:22.0	filled with many millions of dollars in cash.
0:25.0	The vault belonged to one of the country's first medical marijuana dispensaries,
0:28.9	Harborside, and the cash derived from state legal medical marijuana sales,
0:33.8	was nonetheless considered illegal drug money under federal law.
0:37.6	Hart, who is now the 65-year-old co-founder and CEO of Florida-based Cannabis
0:43.6	Compliance Company, Green Check, was there to help Harborside
0:47.6	build a payment processing system.
0:50.2	Hart, who is not related to the famous comedian, says, quote,
0:54.0	It's a big vault. It made the scene in Breaking Bad look like I knocked over my granddaughter's piggy bank.
0:59.0	That's how much money was there.
1:02.0	Hart turned to his host at the bank, the legendary... money was there.
1:02.6	Hart turned to his host at the bank, the legendary California cannabis activist and
1:06.7	entrepreneur, Dress Wedding, who founded Harborside in 2006 with Steve De Angelo, and asked why the hell they kept so much money around.
1:16.0	Wedding explained that the dispensary could not get a bank account because marijuana was still illegal at the federal level.
1:23.0	That is when Hart realized that Harborside and other state legal cannabis companies
1:28.0	had a huge problem.
1:29.0	They had nearly no access to America's mainstream financial system.
	...

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