Cannabis Banking Is Still Broken. This Credit Union Built Around It.

In April 2026, the federal government moved medical cannabis to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, the most significant change to marijuana’s federal status in more than 50 years. Over the summer, a Drug Enforcement Administration hearing took up the larger question of whether adult-use cannabis should follow, wrapping in mid-July with a recommendation still pending.

What Rescheduling Actually Changed

For the institutions that bank the industry, the April order had far less practical effect than the coverage suggested. Austin Trapp, a High Risk Business Specialist at BHFCU who works directly with the credit union’s cannabis members, describes it in plain terms.

The order signaled possible future change without altering current requirements. Trapp said the credit union “remains hopeful that, with the rescheduling, the changes related to enhanced due diligence will be implemented in the near future.” For now, the work of banking a cannabis business looks the same in the second half of 2026 as it did in the first.

Rescheduling alone was never going to open banking access. That requires either an act of Congress or a financial institution willing to take on the compliance work without it.

What Operators Get, and What Compliance Requires

For an operator, the appeal of a dedicated cannabis program is that it functions like ordinary business banking. Through its cannabis banking program, BHFCU offers members the full range of depository products, checking, savings, and certificates, along with the payment tools most businesses take for granted: debit cards, checks, wires, and ACH origination. It also extends real estate lending, some equipment lending, and credit cards to cannabis members.

Behind those standard products sits a compliance process that ordinary business accounts do not require. Banking a cannabis business means continuously demonstrating, to federal satisfaction, that the money is clean. “Financial institutions are required to make a reasonable determination that the funds coming into the account are from legitimate state-legalized sales,” Trapp said.

In practice, that means collecting a member’s point-of-sale data and reconciling it against the deposits that hit the account, a degree of scrutiny ordinary business accounts do not receive.

Where Cannabis Banking Still Falls Short

For all that a mature program can offer, Trapp is direct about where the system continues to fail operators, and the shortfall is not unique to his credit union. Deposits and payments have become increasingly accessible for cannabis businesses. Access to capital has not.

Most lending requires collateral, and a cannabis operator’s most valuable asset, its inventory, generally cannot be pledged the way businesses in other industries borrow against their stock. The state license that makes the product legal cannot simply transfer to a lender in a default, which leaves the inventory largely unusable as security.

The obvious remedy is federal legislation, and it is back on the table. The SAFE Banking Act returned to Congress in 2026, this time extending its proposed protections to the ancillary businesses and hemp operators that support the industry. The bill has cleared the House repeatedly over the years and stalled as many times in the Senate, and even its sponsors frame it as necessary despite the recent rescheduling rather than because of it.