Cannabis Banking Costs: What the GAO Found About Fees, Loans and Payment Access

Cannabis banking is often reduced to a yes-or-no question: does the business have an account? A new federal review shows why that measure misses the problem. Forty-three of 48 state-licensed cannabis operators who answered a Government Accountability Office poll said they had business bank accounts. Yet the same inquiry documented sudden account closures, monthly charges that can reach extraordinary levels, costly loans, unreliable payment systems and personal financial consequences for workers. Access exists, but it is thinner, more expensive and less dependable than the word “banked” suggests.

What the GAO Actually Studied

The GAO released its cannabis-banking review publicly on September 8 after a performance audit that ran from April 2024 through August 2026. Investigators held nine focus groups and 11 interviews involving 74 financial institutions, then conducted eight focus groups with 51 owners and managers of cannabis-related businesses. They also reviewed federal guidance, regulator practices and FinCEN data.

This was a focused qualitative review, not a national prevalence survey. GAO deliberately selected participants to capture different business types, institution sizes and banking policies. The results reveal recurring mechanisms and lived costs; they cannot tell us what percentage of every U.S. cannabis business experiences each problem.

Banked Does Not Mean Secure

Participants described difficulty opening accounts, unexpected closures and the need to keep backup relationships. Some institutions knowingly served cannabis businesses; other operators said they initially obtained an ordinary account and later disclosed the nature of the business. That arrangement can end once a bank changes its risk appetite or identifies activity it does not want to monitor.

The added expense is not a minor service charge. Business owners in seven of eight focus groups reported paying account fees. Participants in two groups described annual totals of $100,000 or more. Those are individual accounts from non-generalizable focus groups, not a typical national bill, but they show how compliance costs can become a separate operating line rather than a rounding error.

The strain lands differently across the market. A large multistate operator may spread compliance and treasury costs across many stores. A small independent licensee cannot. That imbalance matters when other pressures, including the contraction tracked in our cannabis sales and market-health analysis, already compress margins.

Credit Can Be Available and Still Be Unusable

All eight cannabis-business focus groups reported high interest rates or unfavorable terms on business loans. Seven groups cited offers above 15%. For context, the GAO compared those reports with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s small-business lending survey, which put median rates on certain new term loans between 7.42% and 7.91% in early 2025.

That is not a controlled comparison: the borrowers, loan products, collateral and dates differ. It does make the scale understandable. Financing inventory, equipment or a facility at more than 15% changes which projects are viable. The GAO also heard that federal illegality can make cannabis collateral unattractive because property connected to the business may carry seizure risk.

Federal marijuana rescheduling could change some tax and research conditions if completed, but it would not automatically create ordinary banking. Our Schedule III process tracker explains why rescheduling is not legalization and why separate banking rules would still matter.

Why “1,000 Banks” Is an Easy Number to Misread

FinCEN data showed roughly 1,000 banks and credit unions filed selected cannabis-related suspicious activity reports in fiscal 2024. That does not mean 1,000 institutions openly maintained full-service cannabis programs. As the full GAO report explains, a filing can reflect an occasional transaction, an institution that did not know it was serving a cannabis business, or a relationship with an ancillary company rather than a plant-touching operator.

The count also says nothing about product depth. A bank may accept deposits but decline loans, international wires or merchant processing. Measuring access by the number of institutions that filed a report therefore overstates what many operators can actually buy.

Payments and Payroll Remain Fragile

Visa and Mastercard prohibit cannabis purchases on their networks, according to the report. Businesses described workarounds such as ACH transfers and so-called cashless ATMs, but those systems can be cumbersome or shut down when network rules are enforced. Cash is not merely inconvenient: counting, transporting and storing it adds labor and security exposure.

Payroll produced another weak link. Owners and managers in seven of eight focus groups said a payroll provider had closed or suspended service. When providers treat the industry relationship as temporary, a compliant operator still has to build operations around the possibility that a basic vendor disappears.

The Consequences Follow Workers Home

About half of the 44 owners and managers who answered a personal-banking poll said they or employees had experienced trouble with a personal account or loan because of their cannabis work. Seven of eight focus groups included reports of employees being denied mortgages based on employment. Again, these are participant reports, not a national rejection rate. Their importance is qualitative: the risk premium can attach to a paycheck even when the worker is not making cannabis-policy decisions.

That spillover helps explain why banking belongs in broader market coverage. License litigation, ownership disputes and enforcement already determine who can compete, as our guide to cannabis business license lawsuits shows. Financial access can create a quieter gate based on account durability, lender terms and vendor policy.

Why Banks Still Hesitate

Institutions told GAO they weigh conflicting federal and state laws, possible regulatory consequences and the cost of repeated due diligence and suspicious activity reporting. Some entered the market to serve a community need or pursue a business opportunity. Others judged the staff, monitoring and legal exposure too costly.

One finding deserves precision: GAO found no indication that an institution had received a civil or criminal penalty solely for serving a cannabis business. Federal banking regulators said they had taken no enforcement action on that basis. That is not a legal safe harbor. Cannabis remains federally prohibited with limited exceptions, and institutions still have Bank Secrecy Act obligations. The absence of a documented penalty does not erase the work or uncertainty that shapes their decisions.

What the Report Does Not Cover

The review concerns state-licensed cannabis businesses operating under state cannabis laws. GAO explicitly excluded hemp companies, even though some hemp products can be intoxicating. The separate threat facing those businesses under new federal total-THC rules is covered in our analysis of projected hemp business closures.

The report also does not calculate a representative nationwide average for fees, loan rates or closure frequency. Its focus groups surface patterns and unusually concrete examples. Responsible reading means using them to understand the structure of the problem, not turning them into a census.

What Meaningful Access Would Look Like

Progress should be measured beyond the account count. Can the business disclose what it does and keep the relationship? Are deposit charges proportionate? Can it borrow on terms comparable to a similarly situated non-cannabis company? Can customers pay through stable, rule-compliant channels? Can payroll run without a vendor exit? Can employees apply for ordinary personal credit without their industry becoming an automatic disqualifier?

The GAO report does not prescribe a single legislative solution. It does make the standard clearer. Banking access is meaningful only when the essential services around an account are durable enough for a legal state business to operate, invest and pay people without treating every transaction as a contingency plan.