Frequently Asked Questions
General
Mercury was founded with the idea of making banking better for startups. We spent our first five years creating a powerful bank account that made banking feel less like an obstacle and more like a catalyst.Now, we’re building software to run all your financial operations from that powerful bank account so your company can perform at its best — that means more precision, more control, and more focus. We call it “operational excellence.”We offer:
- Checking and savings accounts with no monthly fees
- The protection of up to $5M in FDIC insurance through our partner banks and their sweep networks
- Debit and credit cards for your whole team
- Wires, ACH, and check payments
- Treasury management and venture debt options
- Time-saving finance automations, including bill pay, accounting automations, and coming soon, invoicing and reimbursements
- Customizable permissions that keep you in control
- The knowledge, network, and connections you need
- An experience over 200K startups love
You’ll need a U.S. company with a federal EIN, your company’s official formation documents, and a picture of your government ID (e.g., a passport or U.S. driver’s license).Customers must have some type of existing or planned operations in the U.S. and a U.S. or international address for their principal place of business. This can be a residential address, but may not be a registered agent, PO box, or UPS box address. Our customer base includes startups and ecommerce companies, as well as venture capital firms with entities in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and United Arab Emirates. Upon applying, we’ll review to ensure you have up-to-date formation documents and otherwise satisfy our onboarding requirements.We cannot currently open accounts for founders operating in the following countries and regions: Afghanistan, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Rep, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, Croatia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Macao, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Turkey, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine (specifically, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk, and and Crimea).
Yes, we’re proud to support U.S. companies founded by people across the globe, as well as founders and venture capital firms with an entity based in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and United Arab Emirates. Customers must have some type of existing or planned operations in the U.S. and a U.S. or international address for their principal place of business. This can be a residential address, but may not be a registered agent, PO box, or UPS box address.We cannot currently open accounts for founders operating in the following countries and regions: Afghanistan, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Rep, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, Croatia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Macao, Mali, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Turkey, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine (specifically, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk, and and Crimea).We’d love to support residents of more countries over time, so let us know at [email protected] if you live in one of the above countries and we’ll let you know if anything changes.
We can accept most U.S. companies that aren’t money services businesses or involved with adult entertainment, cannabis or internet gambling. Our product is geared towards tech companies, so it might not be the best fit for some other businesses, especially ones that frequently deal with physical cash. We cannot open accounts for trusts.
Mercury checking and savings deposits are FDIC-insured up to $5M through our partner banks and use of sweep networks. As a broader effort, we are working on expanding all coverage even further. You can learn more about FDIC insurance here.
Mercury makes security a top priority. Here are some measures we take to ensure your security:
- Require HTTPS on all pages, and use HSTS to ensure browsers only ever connect to Mercury over a secure connection.
- Employ a third party to perform penetration testing each year to check for vulnerabilities.
- Hash and store all passwords with the bcrypt algorithm — never as plaintext.
- Use time-based one-time passwords for two-factor authentication. We never send authentication codes via insecure channels like SMS.
- Encrypt our database and all uploaded images, with additional encryption for sensitive data like social security numbers.
- Never store your debit or credit card numbers.
Pricing
Mercury business banking is free to use. However, certain advanced features may incur fees. These include: making mass payments on our API, accessing Mercury Treasury account management, exchanging money in non-USD currencies, and sending USD internationally with optional premium processing. There are no account minimums, overdraft fees, monthly fees, or account opening fees.Advanced payment workflows are also available and free to try until August 1st. On August 1st, customers will have the option to select a paid plan (starting at $35/month) for access to these advanced payment workflows, including our enriched NetSuite automations and the ability to pay all monthly bills from Mercury. Learn more about pricing.If your business doesn’t need access to these advanced financial workflows quite yet, don't worry. Our Mercury banking products will remain free for everyone. Sending payments from your Mercury account will remain free to use for everyone, and when you're ready, you can upgrade to access the advanced features at the price point that makes sense for your company and volume of business.
Mercury Personal gives you powerful personal banking for one all-inclusive subscription of $240/year. Your subscription is debited directly from your personal account once per year on the date you signed up. Learn more about how Mercury Personal can help you optimize your personal finances here.
While you can always send payments for free through your Mercury account, using Mercury Bill Pay gives you more precision and control and allows you to pay bills more efficiently. Using AI, Mercury Bill Pay automatically extracts data so there is no need to copy and paste invoice information. Bill Pay allows you to receive bills to a dedicated bill inbox, which helps you manage and prioritize your unpaid bills, organizing them by approval status and due dates. Lastly, Bill Pay allows you to sync your bill data directly to your accounting software.
Even though opening a Mercury account is free, we make money in a number of different ways. We earn interest on deposits, foreign exchange processing on international wires, and fees paid on Mercury Treasury and Mercury Venture Debt. Additionally, when you use your debit card or IO credit card, Visa and Mastercard charge a fee to the merchants — we receive a percentage of this fee, known as interchange. We also have subscription revenue from our financial workflows products and Mercury Personal.
There is a conversion fee (1% on the USD amount). This helps us cover the cost associated with sending money internationally through the SWIFT network. If your company is exchanging >$200K, reach out to us to chat about fees.
As a Mercury customer, you have the option to send USD international wires for free. We offer two options for how those wires are processed. The first, coded as SHA, is standard among most banks and while free to you, may result in intermediary bank fees that are absorbed by your recipient. The second, coded as OUR, gives you the option to pay a flat fee of $15 so that any intermediary fees will be charged back to Mercury, making it more likely your recipient will receive the full amount.
Security & Privacy
We use your social security number solely to verify your identity. We do not check your credit score or perform any credit checks.
Mercury works with two FDIC-insured banks, Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust. You can locate your Mercury account’s banking provider by logging in and viewing the banking partner listed on your Mercury statements.Through each of our partner banks, Mercury customers get access to a sweep network of trusted banks. This sweep network provides up to $5M in FDIC insurance by automatically spreading your deposits across up to 20 different banks, without requiring you to open and manage separate bank accounts.Our Treasury product is offered through an additional partner, Apex Clearing Corp, who is a FINRA-regulated broker-dealer. The mutual funds that you can invest in through Mercury Treasury are managed by Morgan Stanley and Vanguard.
Your checking and savings deposits are held in your name across a sweep network of multiple regulated banks. Through this program, we’ve upgraded the FDIC insurance on Mercury checking and savings accounts to up to $5M — 20x the per bank limit.In addition to working with our banking partners to keep your funds secure, Mercury’s world-class fraud engineering and compliance teams work together to build tools and processes that spot suspicious activities and stop them in their tracks.
Mercury makes security a top priority. Here are some measures we take to ensure your security:
- Require HTTPS on all pages, and use HSTS to ensure browsers only ever connect to Mercury over a secure connection.
- Employ a third party to perform penetration testing each year to check for vulnerabilities.
- Hash and store all passwords with the bcrypt algorithm — never as plaintext.
- Use time-based one-time passwords for two-factor authentication. We never send authentication codes via insecure channels like SMS.
- Encrypt our database and all uploaded images, with additional encryption for sensitive data like social security numbers.
- Never store your debit or credit card numbers.
Mercury is SOC 2-compliant, meaning you can have confidence in our operations and service commitments — and peace of mind that we take pride in them. If you need our SOC 2 report for your own compliance records, reach out to us at [email protected] and we’d be glad to help.
Plaid makes a product that allows users to securely connect bank accounts to apps. They’re used by companies like American Express and Venmo to authenticate and verify bank accounts instantly. We use Plaid to allow users to connect their other business bank accounts with Mercury. This enables us to facilitate quick transfers between accounts and centralize your financial data on one dashboard. Head here to learn more about Plaid.
Authy and Google Authenticator are apps for two-factor authentication that we use to make logging into your account more secure. They work by generating codes that are unique to the device they’re downloaded on, providing an extra layer of verification when you attempt to log in.
Two-factor authentication by SMS can be compromised by hackers who port your phone number (referred to as a “port-out scams”). We require Authy or Google Authenticator as an alternative as they can’t be compromised in this way.
Please email [email protected].
Moving Money
Yes, you can send money via ACH for free through your Mercury dashboard by going through the Send Money flow.
Yes, you can send domestic and international wires through your Mercury dashboard by going through the Send Money flow.
Yes, you can send international wires in 30+ currencies by going through the Send Money flow in your Mercury dashboard. As a Mercury customer, USD international wires are free for you to send, and for $15, you also have the option to send a type of wire designed to cover any transaction fees your recipient incurs. Non-USD wires incur a transparent 1% currency exchange fee to help cover the cost of processing.Companies formed outside the US are not able to use the international wire features at this time.
Yes, you can send checks for free through your Mercury dashboard by going through the Send Money flow. For now, we don’t issue checkbooks and third-party checks can’t be drawn on Mercury accounts.
Yes, you can deposit checks via remote deposit through your Mercury dashboard by going through the Add Funds flow. Note initial check deposit limits are determined based on business verification and transaction history, but can be adjusted. We cannot currently accept eChecks.
We don’t currently support cash deposits. Email us at [email protected] if you’d like us to add this feature.
As a Mercury customer, you have the option to send USD international wires for free. We offer two options for how those wires are processed. The first, coded as SHA, is standard among most banks and while free to you, may result in intermediary bank fees that are absorbed by your recipient. The second, coded as OUR, gives you the option to pay a flat fee of $15 so that any intermediary fees will be charged back to Mercury, making it more likely your recipient will receive the full amount.
IO Credit Card
Like most business credit cards on the market, IO is a charge card, which means that you will need to pay off your full IO balance every pay period. Your pay period may be daily or monthly, depending on the average cash balance in your Mercury account. We’ll automatically deduct your full balance from your chosen Mercury account on a date of your choosing. You can also pay off your card early at any time.
Not currently, but Mercury checking and savings accounts are free for your business, and they’ll help you manage all your business’ spend from a single dashboard as you scale.
No, we do not consider your personal credit score or run a credit check during the application process.
No, similar to most business credit cards on the market, IO is a charge card product that requires payment in full every month — with a limit determined by your Mercury account balance. Before issuing customers IO cards, we do not require a security deposit or personal guarantee. Secured credit cards, on the other hand, are commonplace in consumer banking for customers looking to build credit, and they do require a security deposit that the bank holds as collateral in case of default.
Yes, using IO may help your company establish a strong credit history and improve your business credit score. Mercury reports IO payment history to Equifax and Dun & Bradstreet, two of the three major business credit bureaus. Reporting your IO payments can help your company establish a strong credit history, improve your credit score, and open doors to more opportunities for growth and financing.
Mercury does not charge additional foreign transaction fees. However, if you make a purchase in a currency other than USD, the amount of the transaction will be converted into USD, and you may be subject to a foreign exchange fee for the conversion.
Mercury has a startup-friendly underwriting model — we understand that our customers may be newly incorporated, retain low cash balances, and have limited credit or banking history. Because all IO customers hold cash within Mercury, we can more accurately understand your financial position, and offer a higher credit limit than what is typically offered to startups by traditional banks.
Your credit limit will be determined by your Mercury account balance. Your limit might increase as your Mercury balance increases, but your credit limit may also decrease. Currently, we reassess your business limit following large withdrawals and deposits.
Your credit limit will be determined by your Mercury account balance. Your limit might increase as your Mercury balance increases, but your credit limit may also decrease. Currently, we reassess your business limit following large withdrawals and deposits.
We’d recommend checking that you have a high enough balance on your IO card to cover the purchase. You should also make sure your card isn’t frozen. If you are not an admin and the card still isn’t working, please reach out to your account’s admin. Otherwise, send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to help.
Yes, IO offers zero liability protection for unauthorized purchases. If you ever notice a suspicious transaction that you suspect may be fraudulent, please reach out to us at [email protected]. You may also want to freeze or cancel your card as an added layer of protection.
Yes, your business must maintain $25K in a Mercury account to qualify for IO and keep your credit account active. Your credit limit is determined by your Mercury account balance. Your limit might increase as your Mercury balance increases, but your credit limit may also decrease.
We don’t charge annual fees or foreign exchange fees on IO cards. And because you’ll pay off your IO card automatically each month, you won’t incur any interest.On August 1st, customers will have the option to select a paid Mercury plan (starting at $35/month). IO card features are still free to use, though if you want to use our enriched NetSuite accounting automations to sync your IO card transactions to NetSuite, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan. QuickBooks and Xero enriched automations, as well as the ability to import bank feed connections across QuickBooks, Xero, and NetSuite, are free. Until August 1st, all Mercury features will be free and available for all customers to try.Learn more about pricing.
Debit Card
Go to app.mercury.com/activate and set a PIN for your card once you’ve received it.
Yes, our debit cards can be used at ATMs. We don’t charge any fees on top of what the ATM operator charges. This includes cash withdrawals in non-USD currency - Mastercard will handle the conversion rate. You can get a rough idea of Mastercard’s conversion rates here.
We don’t currently support cash deposits. Let us know at [email protected] if this is something you want to do.
Savings Account
Yes, you do.
Your savings account doesn't currently have a limit to the number of transfers you can make. This federal regulation was changed during the COVID-19 pandemic from an original limit of 6 transfers per month.
Mercury Treasury
Mercury Treasury secures and scales your runway through lower-risk, highly liquid portfolios with Vanguard and Morgan Stanley — all in a few clicks. Manage your funds in one place and set up custom rules to automatically move excess funds from your Treasury account to your operating accounts.Personalized portfolio management is also available to customers with account balances over $25M through an additional product, Mercury Treasury Solutions with Morgan Stanley. Reach out to [email protected] or contact your personal relationship manager for more details.
Investments made in Mercury Treasury ensure that your money is protected beyond any FDIC insurance amount — at any deposit size. Mercury Treasury offers secure investment options:
- Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund is ultra-conservative and 99.5% invested in U.S. government-backed securities.
- Morgan Stanley Ultra-Short Income Portfolio is a lower-risk fund that invests in ultra short-term instruments like commercial paper and certificates of deposit.
There is no maximum, but if you are planning on investing over $200M, please check with us first.
Mercury Bill Pay
Mercury Bill Pay is an automated accounts payable solution that allows you to easily manage all your company’s bills with precision. Paying bills out of your Mercury account means that there is no middleman, giving you more visibility and control of your funds from end to end. You eliminate third-party processing of your funds and hold on to your money longer. Receive or drag and drop bills into your bill inbox and we'll automatically populate bill details for you and detect any duplicate invoices. Approve bills effortlessly and prevent unauthorized payments with a pre-approved vendor list.
Mercury Bill Pay is only available to Mercury customers. Go to Payments in your left profile menu. If you don’t already have an account, you can apply for one here.
On August 1st, customers will have the option to select a paid plan (starting at $35/month). All customers can process five free bills per month, but also have the option to upgrade to a paid plan in order to pay more bills, as well as unlock certain capabilities like our enriched NetSuite accounting automations. But until August 1st, all bill pay features (including the ability to pay unlimited bills from Mercury) will be available for customers to try for free. Learn more about pricing here. If you don't need these advanced financial workflows quite yet, don't worry. Sending payments from your Mercury account will remain free to use for everyone, and when you're ready, you can upgrade to access the advanced features at the price point that makes sense for your company and volume of business.
While you can always send payments for free through your Mercury account, using Mercury Bill Pay gives you more precision and control and allows you to pay bills more efficiently. Using AI, Mercury Bill Pay automatically extracts data so there is no need to copy and paste invoice information. Bill Pay allows you to receive bills to a dedicated bill inbox, which helps you manage and prioritize your unpaid bills, organizing them by approval status and due dates. Lastly, Bill Pay allows you to sync your bill data directly to your accounting software.
You can schedule and send payments directly from your Mercury account via ACH, domestic and international wire, or check.
Yes! Categorize a bill with a GL code right when you pay it, and your bill information will automatically sync to QuickBooks, NetSuite, or Xero. If you prefer, CSV file downloads are also available, which you can upload to your accounting platform of choice.
Yes! When you’re ready to pay a vendor, request their payment details and essential tax documents (W-9 or W8-BEN) and store them in your Mercury dashboard.
Accounting Automations
Mercury currently supports direct integrations with QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, and Xero. CSV file downloads are available, which you can upload to your accounting platform of choice.
QuickBooks and Xero enriched automations, as well as the ability to import bank feed connections across QuickBooks, Xero, and NetSuite, are free. Additionally, many of our employee spend and expense reporting features — like debit and IO credit cards, receipt policies and reminders, and user permissions for your team — will continue to be free.On August 1st, customers will have the option to select a paid plan (starting at $35/month) to use our enriched NetSuite accounting automation, as well as to pay all of their monthly bills. But until August 1st, these features will be free and available for all customers to try. Learn more about pricing.
We limit access to a company’s accounting automations set-up to the account’s admins and bookkeeper roles. We’re currently working on allowing you to give custom access to other members of your team.
User Accounts
You’ll be able to find your accounts and their associated routing and account numbers from the Accounts tab on your dashboard.
Yes, you can invite as many team members as you want to your Mercury account.
For now, we have four types of access: admin access, bookkeeper access, custom access, and card only access. Users with admin access can receive a debit card, can move money, and can add team members or change their permissions. Users with bookkeeper access won’t receive a debit card, can’t move money, and can’t add or edit users. Users with custom access can either move money around unrestricted, not at all, or with admin approval. They can be issued a debit card but cannot access security settings or manage the team. Users with card only access can be issued a debit card and are only able to view their own transactions. They cannot view account information or transactions outside of their debit card.We have more granular permissioning in our roadmap. Please send us an email at [email protected] if you have an urgent need for this or want to give us feedback about what user permissions would be useful.
You can add team members, including bookkeepers, to your Mercury account through the Team tab in your Settings page.
Email us at [email protected] and we’ll get it sorted for you.
We’re fully integrated with QuickBooks Online and Xero and can automatically sync your transactions to both tools.
Yes, you can download your statement through the Documents tab in your Mercury dashboard.
Yes, we have bookkeeper accounts which give access to your transaction history and statements, but cannot initiate any money movements or change user permissions.
Mercury is fully integrated with accounting tools like QuickBooks Online, Xero, and NetSuite, allowing you to sync your transactions. Additionally, you can authorize wire drawdowns, most commonly used for payroll processing, with payroll providers such as Gusto, Sequoia One, ADP, and TriNet. Mercury is also compatible with payment processors like Stripe, Square, Shopify, and Paypal.
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