Stronghold

Stronghold is a payments and financial-services company led by founder and CEO Tammy Camp and co-founder and CTO Sean Bennett, who its about page says met in 2014 through work on the Stellar platform. Its homepage does not single out an industry. The site also covers card processing, real-time payments, merchant financing and a digital asset called SHx, but most of its case studies are cannabis retailers: Airfield Supply Company, Garden of Eden, Haven Dispensaries, High Times and Sava, plus the POS company Treez. The site does not state a headquarters city or founding year; its copyright line starts in 2017 and its terms are governed by California law.

The cannabis product is Stronghold Pay, an ACH checkout that captures and verifies bank details and payment authorization through APIs, so the retailer's own brand stays on the checkout screen. According to its Treez case study, Stronghold's engine powered TreezPay at its April 2020 launch, and it has integrations with BLAZE and Tymber. Its case studies report a 25% higher average order for Haven's pay-by-bank orders across seven stores and 47% online prepayment among High Times delivery customers. A promotions feature lets retailers fund discounts that push shoppers toward digital payment.

Merchants connect through a POS or e-commerce partner or directly through Stronghold's APIs and JavaScript SDK, with transaction-level reporting and reconciliation. Stronghold does not publish ACH pricing for cannabis. A separate page for CBD sellers lists online card processing at 3.8% plus 30 cents per transaction. Because the homepage no longer markets to cannabis, buyers should confirm the product is available in their state and through their POS before planning around it.