Fintech company Abaca launched a banking platform to serve the cannabis industry, including lending services such as real estate/mortgage loans, equipment financing, inventory credit lines, purchase order financing and receivables factoring.

Originally launched in Arkansas in late 2017 as MediPays, Abaca recently completed the prestigious CanopyBoulder accelerator program in Boulder, CO. There, founders developed a solution to another urgent need in the cannabis industry – access to capital.

Working with partners in Colorado, Abaca has launched a lending component to its platform, and will be working with cannabis businesses to help them obtain credit facilities. Abaca is also opening a lending office in Denver to support this new line of business.

Abaca currently works with the majority of Arkansas’ cultivators and is in the process of onboarding many of the state’s newly-licensed dispensaries on to its banking platform. Abaca also banks licensed cannabis dispensaries, processors and cultivators in Oklahoma, as well as ancillary cannabis businesses (such as testing labs and consultants) in both states.

“For the past four months, I’ve been living in Colorado participating in the CanopyBoulder program,” said Abaca Co-Founder Dan Roda, a Little Rock, AK-based attorney and entrepreneur. “During that time, I was able to immerse myself in the most mature legal cannabis market in the country. There, I found the right tools and resources to help abaca better serve our customers back home. Many of our dispensary and cultivator customers were already asking about lending options. Through our platform, we are now able to partner with both conventional banks and private lenders to help bridge the cannabis capital gap.”