A Pioneering Partnership in the Cannabis Industry

When the founders of Green Leaf Business Solutions committed to serving the cannabis industry, they faced major banking challenges. Now, First Citizens Bank is helping them innovate and break barriers.

Green Leaf Business Solutions

In the fast-growing cannabis industry, a patchwork of state, federal and local regulations and varying legalization guidelines have kept many traditional business service providers away. As a result, getting reliable access to basic business functions like payroll and banking has been a major hurdle for companies and employees working in the industry.

Seeing these challenges as an opportunity, Marc Rodriguez and his wife, Kira Amundsen, co-founded Green Leaf Business Solutions along with Tyler Priest, the company's chief revenue officer. Their focus is to provide cannabis companies with payroll, HR and other services that are critical to any business's operations and infrastructure. In doing so, they're making the industry more viable and better to work in.

"Companies need to be able to take care of their people," says Rodriguez. "We wanted to pioneer a space where even if you're an employee inside the cannabis industry, you have access to all the same things that employees in other industries have, like direct deposit and 401(k)s."

In getting Green Leaf off the ground, Rodriguez, Amundsen and Priest ran into issues that many other cannabis-focused companies have also encountered.

"The biggest barriers when launching honestly came down to banking," Amundsen says. "Being able to establish a banking relationship as a payroll provider is really hard, and then throw cannabis in there—it was basically nonexistent when we started."

"How can we solve this?"

Ultimately, Green Leaf needed a financial partner who could help them offer more solutions to other businesses and push the industry forward. When First Citizens entered the cannabis space, Green Leaf was eager to partner with them.

"I worked with First Citizens before and knew the team over there," says Priest. "We were really interested in banking with them, and we were finally able to move our relationship over in 2024."

Banking was a challenge the Green Leaf team was constantly trying to solve, but now, they feel a lot more comfortable. Rodriguez, Amundsen and Priest all say that the size of First Citizens is one aspect that gives them confidence. But they also say that, with First Citizens, they've experienced a shared commitment to the cannabis industry.

"Many of the issues we've had with other banking partners are still prevalent in the industry today. But those issues don't exist with First Citizens as our partner," Rodriguez says.

Growing and pioneering together

Having First Citizens at its side has helped Green Leaf evolve faster and in a more stable way.

"We've experienced triple-digit growth year over year," says Amundsen. "First Citizens has been huge not just for our growth, but for the legitimacy of our business as well. Having access to traditional banking products is a game-changer."

Together, they're also working to offer more types of services to their clients. The goal, Priest says, is to allow cannabis companies to offer employees everything they'd get working in a more traditional industry at the same level of ease and convenience. For example, they've been working on a 401(k) program together—which is enabling workers in the cannabis industry to safely save for retirement.

"There are more than 500,000 cannabis employees across the country, and now we can offer them access to the same types of retirement opportunities that bring people peace of mind," Priest says.

Rodriguez says finding a partner in First Citizens, a big national bank with an established reputation for excellence and the financial strength to keep its commitments, has been a key component of their recent strides. Providing access to the automated clearing house, or ACH, network for electronic deposits and transactions—and expertise in compliance with complicated rules such as the Bank Secrecy Act—have allowed Green Leaf to expand its menu of services and increase its credibility in the marketplace.

Rodriguez says his team's goal is to make Green Leaf the dominant and most trusted name in the industry as the cannabis sector continues to grow. That growth will inevitably involve new opportunities, new challenges and new regulatory hurdles they may not even be able to predict today—and they're looking forward to tackling it all in partnership with First Citizens.

"We just know First Citizens, and we know there's nothing we're going to throw at them that they're not going to be able to handle," Rodriguez says.