California-based banking and financial solutions provider for cannabis businesses Dama Financial closed a $12.6m growth equity raise, bringing its total funding to $24m to date.
Dama will leverage the new round of investment to accelerate its growth, continue to address the lack of financial service products being offered to the cannabis industry, beef up its team and scale the business.
The payment firm facilitates seamless consumer transaction at mobile points of sale for cannabis operators. Currently serving over 7% of the legal cannabis businesses in California, operational in 12 states and with over 50,000 consumers with digital wallets in the US, Dama has processed over $2cn in transaction value since inception, it claimed.
Commenting on the round, Dama CEO Anh Hatzopoulos said, “In one of the fastest-growing industries in the world, Dama is bringing desperately needed financial services to businesses and consumers alike that are safe, secure, compliant and efficient.
“We have spent four years building a platform to enable safe, compliant financial services for cannabis businesses and now is the time to take Dama to the next level.”
Indeed, the cannabis industry is expected to hit $47bn with US sales of legal cannabis expected to quintuple by 2025. Given how legal cannabis sales in 2019 grew by 46% to $14.8bn, according to Arcview Research, more payment solutions solving banking problems for cannabis dispensaries will inevitably sprout across the US and beyond.
Furthermore, while cannabis is legal in a majority of states but remains illegal at the federal level. Since November 2020, six new American states have passed legalisation measures for cannabis. To add on, the US House of Representatives passed the SAFE ACT bill which will now allow financial institutions to provide services to cannabis operators.
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