Karma Koala Podcast 181: Mike Kennedy Green Check: Joining The Dots, An API Financial Solution For The US Cannabis Sector

In this episode I speak with Mike Kennedy of Green Check who are trying to simplify the myriad of of issues a cannabis company faces with banking, insurance and payroll.

We talk about the hows and whys of the business  and touch on the following topics, amongst others.

The growth of insurance options in the US for cannabis businesses.
Payroll, it’s far more complicated than you might think.
How they manage their compliance as a company working with clients countrywide ( A lot of research!)
Are they building a data goldmine, more valuable than the cannabis itself?
Identifying trends and patterns and sharing that with clients.
The growth of cannabis international trade – it’s a no-brainer and more companies are needed to support this growth across jurisdictions

Mike Kennedy

Cofounder, Chief Strategy Officer at Green Check

Green Check (GC) is modernizing the way cannabis businesses and financial institutions work together. Founded in 2017 by a team of technology, banking, and regulatory experts, GC provides industry-leading technology, advisory services and data-driven insights to more than 150 financial institutions and over 10,000 cannabis-related businesses. Green Check was included in both the 2024 and 2023 Forbes Cannabis 42.0 list, recognized by CNBC as one of the World’s Top FinTech Companies, and named one of 50 game-changers in the cannabis industry in the 4th annual The Cannabis 50. It has been repeatedly recognized as Top Compliance Company and Top Compliance Leader at the PBC Awards, the premier cannabis industry honors. In addition, it has been recognized as the Top Financial Technology by the Green Market Report and was also named as one of top Best Places to Work in Fintech in 2022, 2023 and 2024 by American Banker. To learn more about Green Check, visit greencheckverified.com and follow GC on LinkedIn.

Company Mission

Our mission is to support the legal cannabis industry by connecting every cannabis business with the financial and business services that they need to grow.

In a dynamically changing regulatory environment, Green Check remains undaunted in the face of the unknown, mapping the way forward, setting new standards and trends; staying focused on helping the legal cannabis industry do well while doing good.

Through this innovative spirit, Green Check at its core, is about connection.  We connect legal cannabis businesses with the financial and business services they need to grow.  We connect cannabis business performance in a transparent way, giving financial institutions the necessary visibility into cannabis business operations for them to confidently serve the community in compliance with each state law.

We do this through a vast source of data, enabling insights for the rapidly growing cannabis industry.  Our passion for this emerging industry drives our purpose.  We are relentless in our pursuit of expanding opportunities both for cannabis operators and the financial institutions that serve them.

Latest Update

Green Check Expands Unified Cannabis API Offering for New Cannabis Market Entrants and Legacy Businesses

July 23, 2024, 1:04 pm

Today, Green Check (GC), the leading fintech provider of financial service solutions and industry insights in the cannabis market, announced the expansion of Green Check Access (GCA): the first-of-its-kind cannabis API and data tool. GCA helps new verticals enter the cannabis industry, while providing unparalleled insights and data to existing businesses in the space seeking to optimize their operations.

With Green Check Access, businesses get unprecedented access to unified and normalized data from often-disparate sets, such as leading point-of-sale, and inventory systems in the cannabis ecosystem. The result is an easy-to-use, single source of truth for critical data, including customer and product insights, seed-to-sale data, current market and historical analysis, and much more. As it stands, GCA is one of the largest collections of actionable insights for the cannabis industry.

“Having spent the last several years building technology products for cannabis businesses, we understand that one of the largest barriers to entry other technology companies face for serving this market is the need for industry-specific integrations, as well as access to unified data to guide decision making,” said Mike Kennedy, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Green Check. “We believe our newest offering greatly reduces the technical lift and burden of standing up an offering for the industry, while the normalized data component allows all companies to optimize their strategic planning and operations in a way that hasn’t been previously available.”

With the collection of APIs, companies using GCA are empowered to build, connect and monetize solutions specific to the cannabis industry, creating a platform that businesses can adapt to their unique needs.

Early adopters of GCA are already utilizing the tool in powerful ways. CTrust, a Green Check partner and the first credit scoring and monitoring agency for cannabis businesses, uses the unified cannabis API to build a bespoke credit risk rating system for the cannabis industry.

“Through our use of Green Check Access data and integrations, CTrust is able to paint a picture of the financial health of cannabis businesses for banks and lenders,” said Dotan Y. Melech, co-founder and CEO of CTrust. “We believe this will result in a significant increase in lending products to the cannabis industry, which is in dire need of capital.”

New market entrants ranging from beverage companies and laboratories to pharmaceuticals and delivery can also now access these tools. Additionally, early adopters of GCA, including multi-state operators (MSOs) and other large companies in the cannabis industry, can continue deploying this technology to better understand industry trends, make optimal pricing decisions, and truly know their customers.

“We’re excited to see the many use cases of how our partners are already leveraging the wealth of data that Green Check Access provides, and we know that will only grow as the insights continue to evolve,” said Kennedy.

To learn more about Green Check Access, visit greencheckverified.com/cannabisapi. To follow along for more company news, visit greencheckverified.com.