Staack Launches Crowdfunding Campaign for Cannabis Industry Solutions

FinTech Staack has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help it build a solution that will provide digital payments and access to business financing to cannabis businesses.

The solution is being built by co-founders and brothers Alexander Harowicz, who worked in private equity, and Adam Harowicz, who is a licensed cannabis distributor, according to a Monday (Nov. 14) press release.

“Currently, cannabis businesses operate with cash because very few financial institutions are willing to risk having them as customers,” Adam Harowicz said in the release. “Regulations are still a work in progress, and it’s just not worth it for bigger banks.”

Staack aims to solve this problem for cannabis operators by using blockchain as an operating system and payment solution for “everything cannabis,” according to the press release.

With this solution, the company is looking to help cannabis businesses improve their cash flow management and business operations, utilize transaction data and set budgets based on their needs, the release stated.

“Cannabis owners are used to having a single source of truth to run their entire business, and that’s usually a cash vault or safe,” Adam Harowicz said in the release. “So money budgeted for one purpose ends up being spent on another.”

Staack is looking to raise $2 million through equity crowdfunding and plans to launch a pilot program for the solution in New York City in late 2023, according to the release.

This news comes about two weeks after the cannabis industry enterprise commerce technology platform Treez completed its acquisition of payment solutions platform Swifter.

As PYMNTS reported on Nov. 3, the acquisition added Swifter’s roster of retail cannabis clients to that of Treez and enables the offering of enhanced, comprehensive financial services and digital payments solutions.

“Together, we’re tackling the challenges faced by dispensaries in normalizing the cannabis retail experience by bringing forward scalable FinTech and payment solutions to optimize the customer experience and meet consumers where they are today,” Treez CEO John Yang said at the time.