Excited to see this on HN. Happy to answer any questions.
We set out wanting to:
a) deliver an amazing online banking experience for startups
b) help entrepreneurs understand their revenues/costs better and succeed
c) deliver great financial services.
We have a long way to go but are excited to unveil what we have achieved so far.
Mercury will provide your startup a FDIC-insured checking account, debit card, savings account (earning 1-2%). All online, with an application that is finished on average in under 10 minutes and approved usually within a few hours.
We focused pretty heavily on the UI. Hopefully you’ll appreciate little details, like our extremely flexible transaction date picker.
We have a lot more to come on the product side, including better analytics to help you understand your revenue/costs and APIs to build on top of Mercury, as well as new financial services to help startups succeed.
We’d love to hear any and all feedback you have. We’ll be looking at comments here all day, or you can email us directly at immad AT mercury.co, max AT mercury.co or jason AT mercury.co.
Actually most banks make money on deposits and thats their primary source of revenue. We have a rev-share with the bank on deposits revenue. Most of the time there is no good reasons for there to be any fees in our opinion.
I had previously read somewhere that the actual cost to a bank for sending/receiving wires (even international) is less than $1. Why do banks still charge so much for this service?
Because by the time you want to send a wire, you've already decided where to put your money. Plus, it's often a relatively large amount of money an the fee doesn't seem so big.
That explains why everybody puts up with it. It doesn't explain why a startup like Mercury can't come along and shake up the status quo by not nickle and diming their customers like the greedy fucks that are the incumbents.
We give a lot more for free than normal banks. We only charge for wires because right now we have a high fee with our partner. We will fight to reduce that over time.
The company has to be incorporated in the US. But the founder can be foreign.
Unfortunately banking is a very geo by geo thing in terms of regulation, payment rails, banking partnerships etc. We don't have any immediate plans to launch outside the US, though I would love to be global from day 1 if we could.
- Are the analytics pipeable via API/sockets, or are they planned to be behind the GUI? Are you curating a plugins ecosystem with Stripe/Gusto/etc. or can anybody use the API as long as you have keys/secrets?
- How do you plan on handling customer support? I use Schwab /AmEx and I love it b/c you can get a representative on the line in less than two rings. I am always concerned of something happening that can't be easily handled with automated systems with high customer satisfaction (e.g. fraud resolution).
- I like the little things, like the tea you get if you put $250k in checkings. What kind of tea is it and how much do you get? I drink this Pomegranate Mojito high-caffeine tea from Zest Teas at the office and I love it.
hemp isn't marijuana (referring to psychoactive cannabis strains), by design.
(and less importantly (imo), marijuana is a slang term born from racist origins.[0][1])
I think that you mean 'cannabis related'.
Sorry if there is a perceived pedantry on my part; I just think that the distinction is important both conceptually and legislatively, especially given that other countries have understood the distinction between hemp and other cannabis products for some time.
Hemp was removed from the Controlled Substances Act at the end of 2018 [0]. However, I would not be surprised if there were additional state level regulations, though I haven't really looked yet.
Hemp is regulated as an agricultural commodity by the USDA. My company based in Oregon is licensed by the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Whereas in cannabis legal states, cannabis is regulated by something mirroring alcohol/tobacco, hemp is very different.
The UI is really sleek. It definitely doesn't feel like a banking/financial application, so well done.
What was the process like for opening up a banking institution and getting FDIC insurance? Can you elaborate on the timeframe, requirements, or other unique challenges you had to deal with?
The best way to do it as a startup is to be partnered with an existing bank. To get your own charter is a long and expensive process.
Partnering with a bank is relatively speaking not too bad. I spent 3 months talking to about 60 banks before picking our eventual partners.
There are quite a few now that have worked in the past with fin-tech companies and they are open to conversations. There are also fin-tech conferences like Money 20/20 that a lot of them go to.
I'm not apart of Mercury, but per their pricing page [0] sending domestic and international wires are $5 and $35 respectively while receiving from both is free.
Quickbooks/Xero - We do a compatible data export for them. Which works okay for our bookkeepers (Pilot). We are working on integrating with their bank aggregator. Xero will be done pretty soon. Quickbooks, I don't have an ETA on.
Mobile apps - coming soon. Any particular features you would like to see.
Check deposits - will be live on the website first, early next week.
Limits - For most types of transactions they are $200k/day. With some variances. There are other limits. If you have a specific one in mind or want more details email me!
Mobile app = table stakes these days. I think though that Mercury being a place to park cash for startups and earn interest to off-set SaaS costs could be worth it though. You might want to think about a tier where if startups maintain a minimum balance of $X, certain partner services are included for free as an alternative to earning interest.
Really looking forward to your Xero integration, that's currently a must for us (daily sync so we can reconcile customer invoice payments) otherwise Mercury looks great. The Big Bank we use right now don't provide sending ACH or wires online, you have to call them and they give you a confirmation call back about an hour later. It is a giant pain in the behind and completely ridiculous in this day and age.
Once you get automatic Xero sync working we'll be there!
Yes. Probably not in the next month or so, but definitely soon after that. This is especially useful for credit card transactions since we don't offer one at the moment.
We were building a Bitcoin integration for person-to-person and one of our core use cases was allowing people to log in using their banking credentials for ACH transfers, but the issue wasn't charging them, but having us take our share, and transferring between accounts.
The company has to be incorporated in the US. But the founder can be foreign.
Unfortunately banking is a very geo by geo thing in terms of regulation, payment rails, banking partnerships etc. We don't have any immediate plans to launch outside the US, though I would love to be global from day 1 if we could.
I'm a co-founder and CTO at Mercury. We have some amazing frontend UI (the onboarding flow especially) if you'd like to check it out, and our backend is 100% Haskell. AMA
We were a team of 3, with the CEO and myself technical, so ultimately it came down to just co-founder trust. Immad was somewhat skeptical, but after interviewing some amazing candidates who wanted to work for us to use Haskell, he's really liked it.
Development was pretty simple, I just created a yesod-postgres template and we got started with authentication. Are you asking about something specific?
Thanks for your reply. My question wasn't specific, more of a general approach, like how to find people and how to get started with development, etc.
So a small team with technically capable people with I guess little outside interference, that makes sense. I guess I was hoping for a good approach on how to make Haskell/ML/<other sane but not mainstream language> palatable to decision people who aren't all that technically inclined.
I hope so. A backend using Haskell sure would be a selling point for me. I shudder to think of the software that is currently used by many financial firms to handle backend interactions.
I also came across a post from immad [0] on hiring for startups, and it looks like you guys have a high bar for tech talent anyway so using Haskell shouldn't hurt. I wish you the best.
Yes it's definitely a more obscure choice. But a cult classic! It's worked out really well for us; the promise of "if it compiles it works" (mostly) holds out
I know of one other company and it's a small healthcare startup in KC that uses Haskell on the backend and Elm on the front end. I guess they just loved the concepts that much.
Jumping in for Max here. It was actually pretty tough for us to figure out how to name ACH as a payment method. One of our goals going into Mercury was to stay away from acronyms or confusing bank terminology as much as possible. Most banks hide ACH behind "bill pay" or use nonstandard terms like "electronic check" or "e-transfer" which are also confusing and don't describe the payment method clearly. We wanted to expose ACH directly but couldn't figure out how to get across what it was without confusing users further. Hours of debate in the office ensued.
Eventually we decided to just stick with the acronym after finding out pretty much everyone we talked to knew what ACH is.
The .com was unbeknownst to us one of the highest selling domains of all time. I’m sure the public lists I’ve seen are inaccurate, but it ranks at around 100 after selling for a little over a million.
I meant that as, why not pick a totally different name where the .com was available?
For a URL shortner or microblog, the TLD doesn’t really matter much. But for something like a bank it’s important. There’s also the long term problem of users typing the .com and getting sent elsewhere (again particularly nasty for a bank).
Do you have or can you add real check and ACH withdrawal security? I want my bank to decline all externally initiated withdrawals unless explicitly authorized. In other words, when I write a check, I want to tell my bank, and if someone tries to cash a check drawn on my account, I want it to be rejected. The same should go for ACH debits.
This might be harder, but it would be even better if unrecognized debits we’re out of hold for a day or two so I could approve or reject them.
ACH - a basic account can’t have this protection. We have an idea for an account that is for sending only that is always 0-balanced. That’s not live yet, but perhaps it would satisfy your request.
Check - you can send a check to a specific person from the Mercury dashboard but you can’t print a blank check against the account. That would be rejected. So standard check fraud is not possible.
re: ACH protections, it would be really useful to have the bank manage for me an account # per ACH contact. Then I could set limits on each contact (e.g. this contact is only allowed to deposit, this contact can only withdraw up to $X per week, etc.) I could also enable/disable accounts on a per-contact basis (e.g. this contact is now barred from receiving any money).
Most importantly, if party A leaks my ACH info, this shouldn't help any other party.
FYI this is called Positive Pay (at least for checks, although it looks like some banks offer ACH Positive Pay). We upload a file daily to our bank that says "you can allow these check numbers to go through," and anything else would be rejected.
I find it rather surprising that Reg E mostly doesn't protect business accounts. IMO if an account doesn't have Positive Pay or a similar protection, then that account should get the full benefit of Reg E protections. This would probably give the banks a nice incentive to implement Positive Pay for free for all business accounts, since Reg E can be expensive and complicated for the banks.
Can't figure out why the tea gimmick draws me in so much, ha. Also slightly confusing--does the $250k criteria include checking+savings? Or strictly checking, as stated.
But otherwise, what do you see as differentiation from something like Azlo?
You can't beat free. SVB and others get you with free for x months but once their fees and "analysis fees" kick in it really gets quite expensive for a small bootstrapped business even with little activity on your account.
It's also incredible how far behind all banks are with simple things like being able to search your transactions over a decent amount of time.
Good luck and I genuinely hope the free and open to all model proves to be sustainable.
Do you have any plans to handle deposits in currencies other than USD? We’re US-based but receive a fair amount of payments from customers in EUR and we also have obligations in EUR so we’re looking for a way to avoid going from EUR to USD on deposit and back to EUR on payment.
So far, I'm intrigued. But I'm also conservative when it comes to money. None of these questions are specific to Mercury, they are general to any of the fintech startups that have been popping up lately. So:
- do people really use new banks like this?
- how worried is it reasonable to be that bugs in the platform will cause interruption of business/money loss for customers? (I'd be particularly worried that I wouldn't immediately catch an error in the bank's favor.)
- in general, is there ever a compelling reason to not wait a few years for the bank to smooth out its operations before getting on board?
All that said, I love to see innovation in the space and it looks like a refreshing start!
Your focus on API-driven banking really intrigued us, however I wasn't surprised to see that you won't bank money services businesses. Kind of a shame, because we could really use an API to help with cash management.
We are a marketing software company with a previous ad network business. Lots of bills, invoices, credits generated by our system that use APIs to send payments and record statements in accounting software but bank reconciliation is completely manual. Automating even some of it would be helpful.
Looks good but without hijacking the thread does a service like this exist in Europe? If not is it due to different financial regulations (maybe easier to get started in the US?) or something else?
Which features in particular do you need? If you are interested in the APIs, you might be pleased to know that starting September 14th, 2019, any bank in the EU must provide public APIs by law under the PSD2 EU directive for Open Banking. Most banks are already compliant (although their APIs are not exceptional).
there's like a thousand services like this in Europe.
The US is lagging the UK (for example) by at least 2-3 years when it comes to banking.
To understand how far behind the US is, take this example: the London Tube (subway) started accepting contactless payments at all of their stations years ago. All they did was turn it on; all the functionalities were already built into the normal card readers years before that.
Here's another example: all banks in the EU are required to offer APIs for consumption.
Good onboarding. Confirmation of acceptance arrived within 30 minutes of completing my application. It was great to be able to save my application progress: I started on one device, moved to another, and logged out and back in a few times while finding docs and photos between bouts of work-work. Looking forward to discovering where Mercury saves me time and hassle.
Looks very cool. What is the preferred way to deposit checks? I see it mentioned on the FAQ as “add new funds” flow, but I’m thinking more like payment for invoices from old-school customers.
Do you support an RDC scanner, or would it be recommended to use a traditional bank and then electronically transfer it in from them, or wait for a mobile app?
Sadly it seems to be an US only or US centric type of service and I understand that it is as it should be since baking accounts and borders are complicated matter.
Here in Brazil here have Nubank which offers lots of modern features like APIs and so but they do not offer services for business so we have to rely on old crusty bureaucratic evil banks.
What the story on fraud? I was surprised to discover that business bank accounts aren't governed by the same protections that consumer accounts are (Reg E).
What happens if a criminal commits ACH fraud and is successful? Are Mercury's customers protected by some sort of guarantee, other than FDIC which only seems to cover bank insolvency?
The onboarding flow looks nice but unfortunately the document uploading doesn't work at all for me, for PDFs or JPEGs. I'm using the latest Firefox on the latest macOS.
Really good to see more banks who are open to international customers. Your website is also super sleek. Definitely going to switch from SVB to you guys if things work out!
This is AWESOME! A free business bank account, with great interest rates. I've been looking for this for months! The great design is just icing on the cake.
Banks make money on deposits and thats their primary source of revenue. We have a rev-share with the bank on deposits revenue. Most of the time there is no good reasons for there to be any fees in our opinion.
We're starting with up to $100k in AWS credit, $1,000 off a 409a and 20% off Pilot bookkeeping for 6 months. More to come. Email me at jason at mercury.co if you want to know more.
I am co-founder, CEO of Mercury.
Excited to see this on HN. Happy to answer any questions.
We set out wanting to:
a) deliver an amazing online banking experience for startups b) help entrepreneurs understand their revenues/costs better and succeed c) deliver great financial services.
We have a long way to go but are excited to unveil what we have achieved so far.
Mercury will provide your startup a FDIC-insured checking account, debit card, savings account (earning 1-2%). All online, with an application that is finished on average in under 10 minutes and approved usually within a few hours.
We focused pretty heavily on the UI. Hopefully you’ll appreciate little details, like our extremely flexible transaction date picker.
We have a lot more to come on the product side, including better analytics to help you understand your revenue/costs and APIs to build on top of Mercury, as well as new financial services to help startups succeed.
We’d love to hear any and all feedback you have. We’ll be looking at comments here all day, or you can email us directly at immad AT mercury.co, max AT mercury.co or jason AT mercury.co.
My usual question to companies that offer banking without fees: If you aren't making money from the fees, how are you making money?
Actually most banks make money on deposits and thats their primary source of revenue. We have a rev-share with the bank on deposits revenue. Most of the time there is no good reasons for there to be any fees in our opinion.
I had previously read somewhere that the actual cost to a bank for sending/receiving wires (even international) is less than $1. Why do banks still charge so much for this service?
Because by the time you want to send a wire, you've already decided where to put your money. Plus, it's often a relatively large amount of money an the fee doesn't seem so big.
That explains why everybody puts up with it. It doesn't explain why a startup like Mercury can't come along and shake up the status quo by not nickle and diming their customers like the greedy fucks that are the incumbents.
Missed opportunity IMO.
We give a lot more for free than normal banks. We only charge for wires because right now we have a high fee with our partner. We will fight to reduce that over time.
What is the availability of the service for countries outside US? Is it supported? If not, what are the plans for supporting it?
The company has to be incorporated in the US. But the founder can be foreign.
Unfortunately banking is a very geo by geo thing in terms of regulation, payment rails, banking partnerships etc. We don't have any immediate plans to launch outside the US, though I would love to be global from day 1 if we could.
Does one need to be present to open a business account if they're a foreigner?
As an example, Silicon Valley Bank doesn't require physical presence when opening an account via Stripe Atlas.
Nope. Though we can only send debit cards within the US
Good to know. Thanks.
Check out Railsbank.com
Are you based out of India? If so, lookout for https://razorpay.com/x-club/
Congratulations on the launch!
- Are the analytics pipeable via API/sockets, or are they planned to be behind the GUI? Are you curating a plugins ecosystem with Stripe/Gusto/etc. or can anybody use the API as long as you have keys/secrets?
- How do you plan on handling customer support? I use Schwab /AmEx and I love it b/c you can get a representative on the line in less than two rings. I am always concerned of something happening that can't be easily handled with automated systems with high customer satisfaction (e.g. fraud resolution).
- I like the little things, like the tea you get if you put $250k in checkings. What kind of tea is it and how much do you get? I drink this Pomegranate Mojito high-caffeine tea from Zest Teas at the office and I love it.
Best of luck!
- Analytics: Good question. Currently we are planning to do just our GUI. But not closed to the idea of having an API for it.
- API: anyone will have access to it.
- Support: We have a number and we do Intercom chat. It's mostly manned during US business hours right now.
- Tea: We are probably going to go for surprising you and not reveal the tea we send :)
Thanks!
Do you work with hemp companies?
Unfortunately not.
Until federal laws change (which might be soon) we can’t bank anything marijuana related.
hemp isn't marijuana (referring to psychoactive cannabis strains), by design.
(and less importantly (imo), marijuana is a slang term born from racist origins.[0][1])
I think that you mean 'cannabis related'.
Sorry if there is a perceived pedantry on my part; I just think that the distinction is important both conceptually and legislatively, especially given that other countries have understood the distinction between hemp and other cannabis products for some time.
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/29/marijuana-na...
[1]: https://splinternews.com/the-racist-strain-of-marijuana-1822...
Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. Is hemp a controlled substance federally too?
Hemp was removed from the Controlled Substances Act at the end of 2018 [0]. However, I would not be surprised if there were additional state level regulations, though I haven't really looked yet.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/newsevents/newsroom/pressAnnouncements/u...
Hemp is regulated as an agricultural commodity by the USDA. My company based in Oregon is licensed by the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Whereas in cannabis legal states, cannabis is regulated by something mirroring alcohol/tobacco, hemp is very different.
Do you work with blockchain / crypto companies?
Yes.
The UI is really sleek. It definitely doesn't feel like a banking/financial application, so well done.
What was the process like for opening up a banking institution and getting FDIC insurance? Can you elaborate on the timeframe, requirements, or other unique challenges you had to deal with?
The best way to do it as a startup is to be partnered with an existing bank. To get your own charter is a long and expensive process.
Partnering with a bank is relatively speaking not too bad. I spent 3 months talking to about 60 banks before picking our eventual partners.
There are quite a few now that have worked in the past with fin-tech companies and they are open to conversations. There are also fin-tech conferences like Money 20/20 that a lot of them go to.
Immad, congratulations on the launch!
1) Do you support international wire transfers? If so, any advantages in terms of fees and exchange rates over a traditional bank such as Wells Fargo?
2) Do you require hardware keys or does 2 factor auth suffice?
I'm not apart of Mercury, but per their pricing page [0] sending domestic and international wires are $5 and $35 respectively while receiving from both is free.
0: https://mercury.co/pricing
CTO here. I do hope to support hardware keys like Yubikey in the near future though!
1) $35/int-wire. We aren't currently competing on fees/exchange here. But the UI is great and we should have APIs for international wires soon.
2) We support Authy, Authenticator and other apps that support TOTP.
Are you folks integrated with Quickbooks or Xero yet? I didn't see any info on the website.
Are there mobile apps? Mobile check deposit? If so, any limits on it?
Quickbooks/Xero - We do a compatible data export for them. Which works okay for our bookkeepers (Pilot). We are working on integrating with their bank aggregator. Xero will be done pretty soon. Quickbooks, I don't have an ETA on.
Mobile apps - coming soon. Any particular features you would like to see.
Check deposits - will be live on the website first, early next week.
Limits - For most types of transactions they are $200k/day. With some variances. There are other limits. If you have a specific one in mind or want more details email me!
Mobile app = table stakes these days. I think though that Mercury being a place to park cash for startups and earn interest to off-set SaaS costs could be worth it though. You might want to think about a tier where if startups maintain a minimum balance of $X, certain partner services are included for free as an alternative to earning interest.
Really looking forward to your Xero integration, that's currently a must for us (daily sync so we can reconcile customer invoice payments) otherwise Mercury looks great. The Big Bank we use right now don't provide sending ACH or wires online, you have to call them and they give you a confirmation call back about an hour later. It is a giant pain in the behind and completely ridiculous in this day and age.
Once you get automatic Xero sync working we'll be there!
Awesome. Please email me and I can update you when that’s live.
In what parts of the world do you accept customers?
The company has to be US incorporated. Customers can be foreign
Will you issue multiple debit cards for a particular account? The other banks I'm looking at don't (Azlo, Banknovo).
Yes, we already do that
Is there anything on your product roadmap about importing my transactions from my old bank to kickstart the analytics?
Good question.
Yes. Probably not in the next month or so, but definitely soon after that. This is especially useful for credit card transactions since we don't offer one at the moment.
Do you work with kratom businesses?
Nina Sharp, and Walter Bishop? :D
:)
Fringe joke right there.
Wow, do you have the API docs? I'd like something for scriptable money transfers.
Not yet. If you drop me an email I can send you an update when we do. Also let me know what your specific use case is.
We were building a Bitcoin integration for person-to-person and one of our core use cases was allowing people to log in using their banking credentials for ACH transfers, but the issue wasn't charging them, but having us take our share, and transferring between accounts.
US-only, do I understand correctly? EU companies need not apply?
Reposting from another comment:
The company has to be incorporated in the US. But the founder can be foreign.
Unfortunately banking is a very geo by geo thing in terms of regulation, payment rails, banking partnerships etc. We don't have any immediate plans to launch outside the US, though I would love to be global from day 1 if we could.
US only?
I'm a co-founder and CTO at Mercury. We have some amazing frontend UI (the onboarding flow especially) if you'd like to check it out, and our backend is 100% Haskell. AMA
How did you sell Haskell?
Once Haskell was decided on, how did you approach development?
We were a team of 3, with the CEO and myself technical, so ultimately it came down to just co-founder trust. Immad was somewhat skeptical, but after interviewing some amazing candidates who wanted to work for us to use Haskell, he's really liked it.
Development was pretty simple, I just created a yesod-postgres template and we got started with authentication. Are you asking about something specific?
Thanks for your reply. My question wasn't specific, more of a general approach, like how to find people and how to get started with development, etc.
So a small team with technically capable people with I guess little outside interference, that makes sense. I guess I was hoping for a good approach on how to make Haskell/ML/<other sane but not mainstream language> palatable to decision people who aren't all that technically inclined.
Hopefully Mercury can be a success story you can cite :)
I hope so. A backend using Haskell sure would be a selling point for me. I shudder to think of the software that is currently used by many financial firms to handle backend interactions.
Best of luck!
Offtopic but I really find this haskell rant by Steve Yegge hilarious https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers...
I also came across a post from immad [0] on hiring for startups, and it looks like you guys have a high bar for tech talent anyway so using Haskell shouldn't hurt. I wish you the best.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20120808074423/http://stdout.hey...
Really like Haskell after taking an upper level programming language class. Interesting choice as I haven't seen/heard of many using it as a backend.
Yes it's definitely a more obscure choice. But a cult classic! It's worked out really well for us; the promise of "if it compiles it works" (mostly) holds out
I know of one other company and it's a small healthcare startup in KC that uses Haskell on the backend and Elm on the front end. I guess they just loved the concepts that much.
Beautiful UI, really well-done! What was the toughest decision made in the process of crafting the UX?
Jumping in for Max here. It was actually pretty tough for us to figure out how to name ACH as a payment method. One of our goals going into Mercury was to stay away from acronyms or confusing bank terminology as much as possible. Most banks hide ACH behind "bill pay" or use nonstandard terms like "electronic check" or "e-transfer" which are also confusing and don't describe the payment method clearly. We wanted to expose ACH directly but couldn't figure out how to get across what it was without confusing users further. Hours of debate in the office ensued.
Eventually we decided to just stick with the acronym after finding out pretty much everyone we talked to knew what ACH is.
Thank you for the response! It's always fascinating to me to hear about the debates/conversations that shaped the final product.
Best of luck, can't wait to see where it goes!
Congratulations!
Meta:
0. How did the co-founders meet?
1. How did you guys come up with the name Mercury?
2. What's the story behind an arab-esque logo?
Thanks.
0. We worked together at a previous company, Heyzap
1. Mercury is the Roman god of commerce is the etymology. Jason came up with the name, so I’m not sure of his exact thought process, though
2. The logo is inspired by Roman mosaics
Why the .co rather than a .com?
The .com was unbeknownst to us one of the highest selling domains of all time. I’m sure the public lists I’ve seen are inaccurate, but it ranks at around 100 after selling for a little over a million.
I meant that as, why not pick a totally different name where the .com was available?
For a URL shortner or microblog, the TLD doesn’t really matter much. But for something like a bank it’s important. There’s also the long term problem of users typing the .com and getting sent elsewhere (again particularly nasty for a bank).
Do you have or can you add real check and ACH withdrawal security? I want my bank to decline all externally initiated withdrawals unless explicitly authorized. In other words, when I write a check, I want to tell my bank, and if someone tries to cash a check drawn on my account, I want it to be rejected. The same should go for ACH debits.
This might be harder, but it would be even better if unrecognized debits we’re out of hold for a day or two so I could approve or reject them.
ACH - a basic account can’t have this protection. We have an idea for an account that is for sending only that is always 0-balanced. That’s not live yet, but perhaps it would satisfy your request.
Check - you can send a check to a specific person from the Mercury dashboard but you can’t print a blank check against the account. That would be rejected. So standard check fraud is not possible.
re: ACH protections, it would be really useful to have the bank manage for me an account # per ACH contact. Then I could set limits on each contact (e.g. this contact is only allowed to deposit, this contact can only withdraw up to $X per week, etc.) I could also enable/disable accounts on a per-contact basis (e.g. this contact is now barred from receiving any money).
Most importantly, if party A leaks my ACH info, this shouldn't help any other party.
FYI this is called Positive Pay (at least for checks, although it looks like some banks offer ACH Positive Pay). We upload a file daily to our bank that says "you can allow these check numbers to go through," and anything else would be rejected.
Right, I know it had a name.
I find it rather surprising that Reg E mostly doesn't protect business accounts. IMO if an account doesn't have Positive Pay or a similar protection, then that account should get the full benefit of Reg E protections. This would probably give the banks a nice incentive to implement Positive Pay for free for all business accounts, since Reg E can be expensive and complicated for the banks.
Can't figure out why the tea gimmick draws me in so much, ha. Also slightly confusing--does the $250k criteria include checking+savings? Or strictly checking, as stated.
But otherwise, what do you see as differentiation from something like Azlo?
You can't beat free. SVB and others get you with free for x months but once their fees and "analysis fees" kick in it really gets quite expensive for a small bootstrapped business even with little activity on your account.
It's also incredible how far behind all banks are with simple things like being able to search your transactions over a decent amount of time.
Good luck and I genuinely hope the free and open to all model proves to be sustainable.
The dreaded “analysis fees”!
We operate at reasonable unit economics. Free should be sustainable.
Do you have any plans to handle deposits in currencies other than USD? We’re US-based but receive a fair amount of payments from customers in EUR and we also have obligations in EUR so we’re looking for a way to avoid going from EUR to USD on deposit and back to EUR on payment.
That would be a cool feature. We don’t have immediate plans to do this.
So far, I'm intrigued. But I'm also conservative when it comes to money. None of these questions are specific to Mercury, they are general to any of the fintech startups that have been popping up lately. So:
- do people really use new banks like this?
- how worried is it reasonable to be that bugs in the platform will cause interruption of business/money loss for customers? (I'd be particularly worried that I wouldn't immediately catch an error in the bank's favor.)
- in general, is there ever a compelling reason to not wait a few years for the bank to smooth out its operations before getting on board?
All that said, I love to see innovation in the space and it looks like a refreshing start!
Your focus on API-driven banking really intrigued us, however I wasn't surprised to see that you won't bank money services businesses. Kind of a shame, because we could really use an API to help with cash management.
We don't do MSBs on the website, but we can support them in theory. Just need extra diligence docs.
Send me an email and we can try to make it happen.
Congrats on the launch. We're with SVB but tired of their crappy ancient tech stack and want a bank with a decent API.
Mobile apps with check deposits and xero/intuit integration would be high priority features before a move.
I've never used startup banking before, curious what kinda thing people look to do with banking API.
We are a marketing software company with a previous ad network business. Lots of bills, invoices, credits generated by our system that use APIs to send payments and record statements in accounting software but bank reconciliation is completely manual. Automating even some of it would be helpful.
Our previous business was an Ad Network. Which is partly what inspired Mercury
Mobile Apps: iOS or Android or both? Any particular feature you are looking.
Xero/Intuit: Which one do you use or do you need both?
iOS. Mobile app with ability to deposit checks and send payments/wires. We use Xero primarily.
We will have web based mobile deposits. But yes, mobile app would be better and we are on it.
Xero support should be live with Plaid in 2-3 weeks.
Looks good but without hijacking the thread does a service like this exist in Europe? If not is it due to different financial regulations (maybe easier to get started in the US?) or something else?
Which features in particular do you need? If you are interested in the APIs, you might be pleased to know that starting September 14th, 2019, any bank in the EU must provide public APIs by law under the PSD2 EU directive for Open Banking. Most banks are already compliant (although their APIs are not exceptional).
there's like a thousand services like this in Europe.
The US is lagging the UK (for example) by at least 2-3 years when it comes to banking.
To understand how far behind the US is, take this example: the London Tube (subway) started accepting contactless payments at all of their stations years ago. All they did was turn it on; all the functionalities were already built into the normal card readers years before that. Here's another example: all banks in the EU are required to offer APIs for consumption.
It is easier. There are quite a few alternatives: N26, Paysera, Revolut, Transferwise
Good onboarding. Confirmation of acceptance arrived within 30 minutes of completing my application. It was great to be able to save my application progress: I started on one device, moved to another, and logged out and back in a few times while finding docs and photos between bouts of work-work. Looking forward to discovering where Mercury saves me time and hassle.
Looks very cool. What is the preferred way to deposit checks? I see it mentioned on the FAQ as “add new funds” flow, but I’m thinking more like payment for invoices from old-school customers.
Do you support an RDC scanner, or would it be recommended to use a traditional bank and then electronically transfer it in from them, or wait for a mobile app?
If you have a ton of checks (>10/month) we are probably not the best solution at the moment.
We are going to have web based check deposit going live next week and mobile in the near term.
Sadly it seems to be an US only or US centric type of service and I understand that it is as it should be since baking accounts and borders are complicated matter.
Here in Brazil here have Nubank which offers lots of modern features like APIs and so but they do not offer services for business so we have to rely on old crusty bureaucratic evil banks.
Sorry! I hear Nubank is great though.
What the story on fraud? I was surprised to discover that business bank accounts aren't governed by the same protections that consumer accounts are (Reg E).
What happens if a criminal commits ACH fraud and is successful? Are Mercury's customers protected by some sort of guarantee, other than FDIC which only seems to cover bank insolvency?
ACH fraud protection is available to Mercury customers. I believe you have 90 days to reverse an ACH.
Customers do have better protection than businesses but in reality most banks extend the same rules to both.
The onboarding flow looks nice but unfortunately the document uploading doesn't work at all for me, for PDFs or JPEGs. I'm using the latest Firefox on the latest macOS.
Hi,
Do you mind sending me your email, and the picture that failed. Sorry about that.
I emailed you at the email address in your profile. Thanks!
Really good to see more banks who are open to international customers. Your website is also super sleek. Definitely going to switch from SVB to you guys if things work out!
This is AWESOME! A free business bank account, with great interest rates. I've been looking for this for months! The great design is just icing on the cake.
I’d love if you integrated with the Stripe api to project future deposits!
That’s part of the plan!
What exactly is the business model for this venture? Vendor lock-in?
Repost from another comment:
Banks make money on deposits and thats their primary source of revenue. We have a rev-share with the bank on deposits revenue. Most of the time there is no good reasons for there to be any fees in our opinion.
What are the partner rewards mentioned for Tea Room?
We're starting with up to $100k in AWS credit, $1,000 off a 409a and 20% off Pilot bookkeeping for 6 months. More to come. Email me at jason at mercury.co if you want to know more.
$1,000 off a 409a? How much would the 409a cost after the discount?
Asking because our 409a cost us about $1,200...
To clarify, it's through a specific partner (fast409a) which usually charges $2,000. Sorry, should have specified in the original post.
Awesome to see other Haskell startups out there!
Are you guys work with Stripe, PayPal directly?
Currently no. But it's a normal bank account so everything should work.
We plan to integrate in to Stripe/Paypal and provide analytics/useful info on the Mercury dashboard.
Aside: we've removed “Show HN” from the title because it's for stuff you've built.
FYI I still see it in the title
Indeed. Thanks!
Do you integrate with Quickbooks Online?
We have Quickbooks compatible exports.
Looking into a deeper integration
Well, SynapseFi is backend!
What about a line of credit?