Mercury

Mercury is business banking built for startups: checking and savings accounts, corporate cards, wires and ACH, bill pay, invoicing, and treasury, all in one dashboard designed to be opened by a founder rather than by a finance department. The problem it solves is that traditional business banking assumes a business that already exists. Opening an account means a branch visit, a minimum balance, and a fee schedule written for a company that has a controller. Mercury lets a newly incorporated startup open an account online in minutes, issue virtual and physical cards to the team with per-card limits, and send free domestic wires and ACH - the operations a two-person company actually performs in its first year. Mercury is a financial technology company rather than a bank itself. Deposits are held through partner banks, and a sweep network spreads balances across multiple institutions to extend FDIC coverage far beyond the standard per-account limit. That structure became a selling point after the March 2023 regional-banking crisis, when a lot of startups discovered their entire runway sat in one institution. In 2026 Mercury received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a federally regulated bank in its own right, which would fold that partner layer into the company. Beyond the account, Mercury has grown into a finance stack: Mercury Treasury for idle runway, bill pay and invoicing with approval rules, expense management, and Mercury Raise, a network connecting founders to investors and to each other. The expansion is deliberate - the account is the wedge, and the surrounding workflow is what makes it hard to leave. Traction is unusually well documented for a private fintech. Mercury reports more than 300,000 customers, roughly one in three US startups, around $650 million in annualised revenue, and four consecutive profitable years. It raised a $300 million Series C led by Sequoia in March 2025 at a $3.5 billion valuation, then a further $200 million in May 2026 at $5.2 billion, led by TCV. How it compares: Brex and Ramp overlap heavily but lead with the corporate card and spend management, with banking attached; Mercury leads with the bank account and adds spend management around it. Relay and Novo aim at small businesses and freelancers rather than venture-backed startups. A traditional business bank still wins if you handle cash, need in-person service, or want lending secured against physical assets. It fits incorporated startups, remote teams, and agencies that operate entirely online. It is the wrong choice for a cash-handling business or anyone who needs a branch.