Co-Founder and CEO Anh Hatzopoulos spoke with New Cannabis Ventures about serving the cannabis space and growing the Dama Financial platform.
When Colorado legalized recreational cannabis, she and her fellow co-founders Dan Henry and George Gresham recognized the lack of banking and financial solutions as a problem for the industry.
The co-founders previously worked together at payments company Netspend.
Beyond that, clients can engage others services, such as savings accounts, lending and secured credit cards.
While Dama Financial has competitors within each of the solutions categories it operates, there is no one company that matches its comprehensive offerings, according to Hatzopoulos.
Dama can serve any client who struggles to get a bank account that will have cannabis transactions flowing in and out of it.
The company focuses its efforts on states with high-need, whether because of a newly launched program or because of banks withdrawing services previously offered.
The company facilitates a wide variety of transactions through its platform, and there could be many different business applications that sit on top of payments, according to Hatzopoulos.
Dama Financial partners with banks, enabling them to safely bank with the cannabis industry.
Ultimately, Dama Financial is continuously looking for ways to make payments so easy and accessible that they are invisible.
The company is aggressively adding clients within its existing footprint and in the states it is expanding into, including Nevada, Missouri and Hawaii.
Dama Financial tracks a number of different metrics across its platform, including the number of customers in its network, customer tenure and dollars processed through the platform.
The industry is struggling with some bad information around consumer payment processing, with some companies operating with a lack of transparency, according to Hatzopoulos.