Maccopay is a payment service provider (“PSP”), similar to PayPal and Venmo. Maccopay, however, is specifically designed to meet all U.S. Treasury Department requirements for a financial institution wanting to compliantly bank the cannabis industry. Full legal compliance is possible due to the Treasury Department’s following of “Cole Memo” of 2014, which established guidelines for financial institutions banking the state-legal cannabis industry. Maccopay and an associated bank or credit union can thus enable the multi-billion dollar-a-year California cannabis industry—and those doing business with it—to avoid the corruption, time, expense, mortal risks and dangers associated with doing business in cash.

Maccopay is a cloud-based software platform with accompanying smartphone apps for Android and iOS. Its name stands for More than MArijuana, ACCOunting (as it integrates with QuickBooks), COmpliance (as it meets all FinCEN requirements) and PAYments.

Maccopay is the brainchild of Jon Drucker, an attorney with over 30-years of experience in law and finance, and his former business partner, a banker with 30 years of experience in banking and US Treasury Department compliance. They set out to solve the cannabis industry’s most vexing problem: the inability of merchants to work with banks. Merchants’ use of cash for transactions is time consuming, laborious, burdensome, expensive and—most critically—dangerous to all parties to the transactions–and their employees.

So, Drucker and his old business partner collaborated to create the most robust banking-compliant software conceivable. Maccopay integrates QuickBooks for accounting, Google Maps for merchants to track their shipments, and METRC—the California state-mandated software that all cannabis related businesses (“CRBs”) must use to “track and trace” all cannabis-related transactions “from seed to sale.”

Maccopay is the only financial software that integrates METRC. For the first time, the tracking and tracing of cannabis will be merged with the money used to pay for it. And because Maccopay is a “closed loop” system, non-vetted entities cannot do business with unlicensed CRBs or anyone not following the rules.

Maccopay first vets a user by acquiring its relevant official documents and comparing them with State and local databases, as well as paying it a site visit. Maccopay thus possesses all relevant information about that user’s business structure, employer tax ID information, and licensing by State and local governments. Of course, to satisfy institution’s KYC (Know your Customer) requirements, Maccopay can share all such information with its financial institution partner.

Once Maccopay approves the applicant-user, the user will then be able to use Maccopay to invoice all its customers. Whenever the user invoices customers for a sale, Maccopay requires the seller to enter all relevant METRC information on each and every invoice. The recipient of the invoice must then go through the same vetting process—before it can become a Maccopay user and use the Maccopay software to pay the invoice. Both users can then export all relevant information to QuickBooks. In turn, the once-payer will now also use Maccopay to invoice and issue purchase orders to its own customers and vendors, who will go through the same process. As merchants invoice and pay new parties, Maccopay and its financial institution partner’s customer base will grow exponentially.

By having these automated procedures recording transactions in real time, Maccopay can regularly generate the data for SARs (Suspicious Activity Reports) and CTRs (Currency Transaction Reports) for a bank or credit union to file with the FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) section of the US Treasury Department.

The reports include both sellers’ and customers’ business name, address, phone, federal EIN, State license number, METRC ID number, METRC ID of products sold, and the date and amount of money that exchanged hands in each transaction. Maccopay reports thus exceed FinCEN’s BSA (Bank Secrecy Act) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) requirements. By doing so, Maccopay provides financial institutions with peace of mind that they have a full backup of information in case of an audit.

Another function of the Maccopay software is color-coded alerts for any transaction of $10,000 or more, thereby alerting the financial institution partner that a currency transaction report (CTR) is necessary.

Through these operations, banks and credit union partners can satisfy all KYC, BSA, AML and CTR requirements.