Reklaim Taps Veteran Founders to Build the Missing Financial Rails for Cannabis

NEW YORK, NY – June 24, 2026 – In a move signaling a deliberate push toward its Q3 2026 launch, Reklaim Credit Solutions has formally appointed co-founders Sam Fensterstock and Bob McCarthy to its C-suite. The announcement places Fensterstock as Chief Revenue Officer and McCarthy as Chief Technology Officer, joining CEO Kraig G. Fox to complete the executive founding team. While executive appointments are routine, this one is anything but. It represents a calculated attempt to solve one of the most persistent and damaging problems hobbling the state-regulated cannabis industry: the complete absence of a standardized commercial credit infrastructure.

For years, the legitimate cannabis market has been a paradox—a rapidly growing, multi-billion dollar sector forced to operate with the financial tools of a bygone era. Reklaim’s mission is to build the missing rails for this industry, and in tapping Fensterstock and McCarthy, it is placing its bets on seasoned architects who have built similar systems before.

The Multi-Billion Dollar Credit Void

To understand the significance of Reklaim’s endeavor, one must first grasp the financial chaos that defines cannabis commerce. Despite projected legal U.S. sales exceeding $30 billion this year, the industry operates in a credit vacuum. Because cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance at the federal level, major credit bureaus like Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax are effectively barred from the market. They cannot provide the detailed credit reports, risk scores, and credit limit guidance that are the lifeblood of B2B transactions in every other industry.

This leaves cultivators, manufacturers, and distributors flying blind. They routinely extend trade credit to retailers and other partners with no reliable data to support their decisions. The consequences are dire and systemic. Recent industry analyses paint a stark picture: over $2.24 billion in accounts receivable is currently circulating through the U.S. cannabis supply chain. A staggering 56% of all invoices are past due, with nearly a quarter being over 90 days delinquent. For a business operating on a 25% net profit margin, every dollar lost to a write-off requires four dollars in new sales just to break even. This chronic instability threatens the solvency of legitimate businesses and creates unpredictable supply chain disruptions.

Businesses are caught in a vise. On one side, they lack access to traditional banking, with fewer than 8% of U.S. financial institutions willing to serve them. On the other, they lack the data to manage the trade credit they must extend to compete. This is the void Reklaim was purpose-built to fill.

Veteran Architects for a New Foundation

Building a credit agency from scratch for an industry with unique regulatory hurdles is a monumental task. Reklaim’s strategy hinges on the deep, domain-specific experience of its newly appointed leaders.

Sam Fensterstock, the new CRO, is not new to this world. His 35-year career is a blueprint for what Reklaim aims to achieve. In 1992, he co-founded F&D Reports (now RetailStat), one of the first firms to bring fundamental credit analysis to major retail chains. Three years later, he co-founded CreditRiskMonitor, a pioneering internet-based platform for commercial credit reporting. His work has consistently involved creating new systems for assessing commercial credit risk, growing revenue, and navigating complex financial markets. His experience directly maps onto the accounts receivable challenges that plague cannabis, only in a more acute form.

On the technology side, Bob McCarthy brings an equally impressive pedigree as CTO. An MIT-educated data engineer with patents in predictive modeling and system architecture, McCarthy’s career has focused on building secure, high-performance systems that turn massive, complex datasets into reliable decisions. His role is to architect the very core of Reklaim's platform: the secure data pipeline, the machine learning models that generate scores, and the security framework that underpins the entire operation. This technical foundation is critical for earning the trust of an industry that is rightfully cautious about sharing its financial data.

“Building a credit rating agency for an industry the major agencies stayed away from is hard, important work, and it is not work you do alone,” said Kraig G. Fox, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Having Sam and Bob join me as co-founders means I get to build this with people who have already done the hardest parts of it elsewhere. Sam has spent his career inside the exact commercial credit and collections world we are bringing to cannabis. Bob has spent his career building the kind of secure, intelligent systems this depends on. I could not be more energized to take on a journey this difficult alongside a team this deep.”

Building Trust Through Technology and Data

Reklaim’s business model is centered on a contributory network. In exchange for sharing their de-identified accounts receivable data, participants gain access to credit scores, suggested credit limits, and full commercial credit reports on their trading partners. This model’s success hinges on two things: convincing businesses to share data and ensuring that data is secure and anonymized.

McCarthy’s leadership is central here. The company is already undertaking a SOC 2 audit, a rigorous, third-party examination of its security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy controls. Achieving this certification is a non-negotiable step toward building credibility and assuring participants that their sensitive financial information is protected. The platform’s architecture is designed to de-identify contributor data upon arrival, aggregating it to power an ensemble of proprietary machine learning models that produce the final credit intelligence.

This technology-first approach is a direct response to the industry's unique challenges. By creating a closed-loop system where data is shared confidentially among members, Reklaim can generate cannabis-specific credit insights without running afoul of the federal regulations that sideline the legacy bureaus.

A Maturing Market and an Emerging Field

While Reklaim’s approach is ambitious, it is not entering a complete vacuum. The very existence of the credit gap has spurred innovation from others. Specialized firms like CTrust have introduced their own scoring systems, and member-based groups like the Cannabiz Credit Association have formed to share debtor information. These efforts underscore the profound need for financial professionalization within the sector.

The emergence of these players, including Reklaim, is a powerful indicator of the cannabis industry’s maturation. It is moving beyond its chaotic, cash-heavy beginnings and demanding the sophisticated financial tools that are standard in every other legitimate market. The appointments of seasoned executives like Fensterstock and McCarthy are not just an internal corporate milestone; they are a signal to the broader financial world that the cannabis industry is serious about building a stable, transparent, and investable future.