NY License Winner Had Banking Strategy

A company that won a license to grow and sell medical cannabis in New York expects to leverage its existing banking relationships in other states to obtain financial services for its new location.

Columbia Care has “a number of banking partners to facilitate in-person payment and electronic payment” in its MMJ businesses in Arizona, Massachusetts, Illinois, Nevada and Washington DC, according to the New York Business Journal.

Columbia Care CEO Nicholas Vita reportedly reached out to those partners about its desire to expand into New York. He asked them three questions: What can his company do better, how can it do better, and what are the concerns they have about a potential expansion?

“When we begin to build a business of our own in any market, we always go back to our counterparties and say, ‘This is how we do it,'” Vita told the Journal.

Columbia Care plans on eventually opening a New York City dispensary in Union Square, near Mount Sinai Hospital, and several others around the state.