[immad]

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.

[jedberg]

My usual question to companies that offer banking without fees: If you aren't making money from the fees, how are you making money?

[immad]

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.

[syedkarim]

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?

[cheerlessbog]

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.

[fro0116]

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.

[immad]

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.

[adityapurwa]

What is the availability of the service for countries outside US? Is it supported? If not, what are the plans for supporting it?

[immad]

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.

[markdown]

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.

[immad]

Nope. Though we can only send debit cards within the US

[markdown]

Good to know. Thanks.

[bradvl]

Check out Railsbank.com

[ignoramous]

Are you based out of India? If so, lookout for https://razorpay.com/x-club/

[yingw787]

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!

[immad]

- 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!

[dumbfoundded]

Do you work with hemp companies?

[immad]

Unfortunately not.

Until federal laws change (which might be soon) we can’t bank anything marijuana related.

[serf]

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...

[immad]

Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. Is hemp a controlled substance federally too?

[zdragnar]

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...

[dumbfoundded]

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.

[mifeng]

Do you work with blockchain / crypto companies?

[immad]

Yes.

[sorine]

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?

[immad]

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.

[markh]

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?

[jumarm]

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

[MaxGabriel]

CTO here. I do hope to support hardware keys like Yubikey in the near future though!

[immad]

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.

[sahaskatta]

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?

[immad]

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!

[deedorgreed]

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.

[Androider]

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!

[immad]

Awesome. Please email me and I can update you when that’s live.

[nemoniac]

In what parts of the world do you accept customers?

[immad]

The company has to be US incorporated. Customers can be foreign

[cweagans]

Will you issue multiple debit cards for a particular account? The other banks I'm looking at don't (Azlo, Banknovo).

[immad]

Yes, we already do that

[jedberg]

Is there anything on your product roadmap about importing my transactions from my old bank to kickstart the analytics?

[immad]

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.

[markdown]

Do you work with kratom businesses?

[insomniacity]

Nina Sharp, and Walter Bishop? :D

[immad]

:)

[baddox]

Fringe joke right there.

[WrtCdEvrydy]

Wow, do you have the API docs? I'd like something for scriptable money transfers.

[immad]

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.

[WrtCdEvrydy]

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.

[jwr]

US-only, do I understand correctly? EU companies need not apply?

[immad]

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.

[unixhero]

US only?