"I always saw myself as an outdoorsman who would one day climb the highest mountain," Mason says. "Maybe that mountain was trying to figure out how to help the legal cannabis industry get banking services."
But Mason couldn't scale that peak alone. So he recruited his family – father Mark, mother Rhoda and sister Delaney – to assist with his budding idea.
"Alex called one Sunday in February and I could sense in his voice he was really passionate about this issue," recalls Mark Mason, a South Carolina attorney. "He wasn't venting. He had an idea to solve this problem. He said, 'Dad, the legal cannabis industry needs to start its own credit union.' Everyone said it could not be done, but no one had actually tried."
The problem that needed solving was a big one: Although the U.S. Department of Treasury released banking guidelines for state-licensed marijuana businesses last year, most banks and credit unions still steer clear to avoid bureaucratic red tape and risk of hefty fines, since weed is illegal on the federal level. As a result, ganja entrepreneurs can have a hard time finding both legitimate funding and a secure place to stash what money they have and make.
