Cannabis B2B Gets a Credit Layer: FundCanna Plugs BNPL Into Apex Trading

SAN DIEGO – FundCanna, the largest dedicated provider of working capital to operators in the regulated Cannabis industry, announced a strategic partnership with Apex Trading, one of the fastest-growing B2B marketplaces in Cannabis. The deal brings embedded financing into a wholesale platform that has grown well beyond startup ambit.

Through the integration, FundCanna’s ReadyPaid™ Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platform will be embedded directly into the Apex ecosystem, enabling sellers to receive immediate payment while buyers access extended payment terms at checkout. As of mid-2026, Apex Trading serves over 5,000 licensed operators and more than 4,000 unique clients across 29 states, and facilitates more than $150 million in gross merchandise value monthly.

The timing is not incidental. The legal Cannabis market carries more than $4 billion in delinquent receivables across its $35 billion base – a structural pressure that has pushed sellers into an informal lender role for their own buyers. According to Beau Whitney, chief economist at Whitney Economics, unpaid receivables in Cannabis represent an existential risk: when nearly 20% of revenue is tied up in overdue payments, operators lose the ability to plan, invest, or even survive.

ReadyPaid is designed to break that cycle at the transaction level. FundCanna pays sellers at the point of sale, with no recourse if buyers default. Buyers receive standard net-30 terms at no cost, with an option to extend repayment by an additional six months. Approval takes minutes, and financing is available the same day.

“Sellers in cannabis have effectively been acting as the bank for the supply chain,” said Adam Stettner, founder and CEO of FundCanna. “With ReadyPaid now embedded inside Apex, sellers get paid immediately and buyers gain the flexibility to pay over time as they generate revenue. When transactions are driven by demand without cash constraints, sales accelerate, order sizes grow and the entire marketplace becomes more efficient.”

For Apex Trading, the integration extends a platform that has been building out its third-party connector ecosystem for several years. Founded in 2018 by three industry veterans, Apex Trading has scaled into 18 state markets and has facilitated more than 200,000 transactions between 500-plus brands and 2,500-plus retailers. The company also offers more than two dozen integrations, including Metrc, QuickBooks, and Slack.

“Our goal at Apex Trading has always been to make the cannabis supply chain more efficient and connected,” said John Manlove, founder and CEO of Apex Trading. “By integrating FundCanna’s ReadyPaid, we’re giving buyers and sellers a seamless financial solution that helps them transact more confidently and grow without being constrained by short-term liquidity.”

Beyond the BNPL feature, Apex clients will also gain access to FundCanna’s automated prequalification process, providing near-instant insight into capital availability deployable through ReadyPaid transactions or through FundCanna’s broader suite of working capital and revolving financing products. The partnership includes a revenue-sharing agreement between the two companies.

The broader context matters here. Of the roughly 10,000 to 12,000 banks and credit unions in the United States, just under 1,000 serve Cannabis businesses as deposit institutions, and almost none extend commercial credit. In April 2026, the DoJ and the DEA issued a final order moving qualifying state-licensed Cannabis activity to Schedule III, which has begun shifting the federal risk posture around Cannabis banking, though formal credit access at scale remains constrained.

ReadyPaid is currently available* in all legal Cannabis markets.

The FundCanna–Apex deal is less a technology story than a credit architecture one. The Cannabis supply chain has long lacked the financial plumbing that virtually every other regulated industry takes for granted. Embedding a BNPL mechanism at the transaction layer of a high-volume B2B marketplace does not solve the industry’s banking access problem in full, but it relocates the credit risk from sellers who cannot afford to carry it to a lender structured specifically to do so.

At $150 million in monthly transaction flow, even incremental adoption of ReadyPaid could redirect meaningful capital back into the hands of producers and distributors. That, in turn, creates a feedback loop that has the potential to accelerate order velocity, reduce receivables drag, and make the wholesale Cannabis market function more like the mature industry it is increasingly expected to be.

*Highly Capitalized Network-HCN reports impartially on developments in the industry and its participants & does not endorse, promote, or take positions on any party, association, or company involved.