Monarch Technologies

Despite the legalization of marijuana in many states, most medical marijuana and marijuana-related businesses (MRBs) don’t have access to banking. Banking services to the cannabis industry are still perceived as a risk-based decision even in the states where cannabis is legal. Why? Because most banks are not equipped to run a program for such a complianceintensive category. Even with state-legal cannabis programs, Marijuana is still federally illegal. Legal cannabis businesses often rely on cash-only transactions, exposing them to security issues, creating inefficiencies, and restricting long-term growth for these businesses and the overall industry. But this reality is fast changing thanks to the innovative Helox platform—a compliance-driven SaaS solution from Monarch Technologies that allows businesses to handle digital payments.

The Helox platform helps cannabis business owners stay on top of the ever-changing compliance regulations at state and federal levels. From the retail dispensary, delivery companies, labs, to the farm or grow operator, Helox allows cannabis and CBD operators to easily transition from a cashbased transaction model into a more secure, transparent, and trackable payment method. Above all, Helox allows MRB owners to legitimize their businesses by streamlining access to traditional banking, payments and cash management services.

“We operate as a fintech services provider for the legitimate cannabis industry, bridging the operational gaps between MRB businesses, governmental compliance entities, and consumers,” says Christian Fea, CEO and co-founder of Monarch Technologies.

“The Helox payment platform is essentially the Venmo for the cannabis industry. Helox is integrated with more than 4,500 financial institutions globally and offers an effective alternative to cash payments. The platform works within both the B2C and B2B cannabis landscape.”

There are multiple ways that a legal cannabis license holder can use the Helox platform. They can either use it as a mobile app, an API based integration, a virtual terminal, a hosted payment page or as a standalone payment option that can work alongside any POS retail system. All an MRB license holder needs to do to start using the Helox platform and accept compliant, cashless payments from their customers is go through a one-time registration and onboarding process. To get their customers using the Helox platform only requires a onetime registration that takes about 3 minutes to complete. Each customer is incentivized with up to $10.00 of immediate credit to use on their first purchase.

The benefits of the Helox platform and Monarch’s ancillary services can best be explained through a recent client engagement. In this instance, a customer with an established virtual marketplace comprising over 2,500 cannabis cultivators, and manufacturers who could not accept digital or card-based payments. As an antidote, Monarch customized its Helox platform for their e-commerce marketplace environment, enabling the client to receive payments from different cannabis license holders quickly, compliantly and securely.

Such success stories testify to the world of difference Monarch is currently making for the cannabis license holder through its compliant, cashless payment options. The Monarch Helox platform is poised to create more fintech solutions and services for the cannabis sector in the coming months. Stay tuned!