Safe Harbor expands cannabis services, lends $550k to three businesses

SHF Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: SHFS), which does business as cannabis lender Safe Harbor, this week launched a new credit program for the marijuana industry, and the first recipients were a trio of Colorado companies that took out a combined $550,000 in loans.

“We’re pleased to be able to offer our longstanding clients access to lines of credit at reasonable terms, an opportunity that is often not readily available to cannabis businesses,” Safe Harbor CEO Sundie Seefried said in a press release.

“Over the past two years, we have recognized increasing demand from small and mid-sized cannabis businesses as they are largely ignored by traditional financial institutions – even those that are currently lending to larger cannabis operators,” Seefried said. “The launch of our Small Business Line of Credit Program underscores our commitment to supporting the capital needs of the entire cannabis ecosystem and further expands the suite of offerings.”

All three lines of credit were awarded “at normalized, non-predatory rates, without real estate collateral, utilizing instead a flexible set of underwriting standards,” Safe Harbor said, which it contended is a “key differentiator” of its services from other lenders in the cannabis space.

Though the three recipients of the new loans were not identified, Safe Harbor emphasized they were all existing clients.

The news followed the disclosure that Safe Harbor has been losing cannabis clients and had seen a decline in net balances for deposits as of March 31, the company reported in its most recent public financial filings. That led to a 3% decline in revenue year-over-year for the first three months of 2024, to $4.1 million.