You incorporate on Friday and need to receive your first investor wire by Monday, but your bank application is still pending after two weeks. Why startups choose Mercury for banking starts with speed and gets better from there. Apply online in 10 minutes and get approved in 1-2 business days with zero branch visits or notarized paperwork. Then Mercury keeps protecting your runway with zero monthly fees and wire charges, while giving you real-time visibility into your burn rate instead of making you wait weeks for transactions to clear and balances to update.
TLDR:
Getting your first business bank account shouldn't take longer than building your MVP. Traditional banks often require 2-3 weeks for account approval, with endless paperwork and in-person appointments. For newly incorporated companies needing to pay contractors or receive investor funds, that timeline means missed opportunities.
Mercury solves this with fully digital onboarding that takes about 10 minutes. Apply online immediately after incorporation, and most accounts get approved within 1-2 business days. No branch visits, no notarized documents, no waiting for banker availability during business hours.
This speed matches how startups actually operate. Incorporate on Friday, apply for Mercury over the weekend, start receiving payments by Tuesday.
Every monthly service fee or wire transfer charge shortens your runway. Traditional banks can drain $500-1,000 annually just in account fees before you've made a single transaction.
Mercury charges zero monthly maintenance fees, zero domestic wire fees, and zero transaction fees on standard accounts. For a startup sending payments to contractors or receiving investor wires, this removes a recurring line item from your burn rate.
The savings go beyond the visible costs. Traditional banks hold wire transfers for review, charge for account analysis statements, and add fees for ACH returns or stop payments. Mercury removes these friction costs entirely, which means one less thing to track and reconcile in your monthly financial review.
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Most business banks treat their API as an afterthought. Mercury built theirs as a core feature. For technical founders, this means pulling transaction data, account balances, and payment details programmatically to automate financial operations that would otherwise require manual CSV downloads and spreadsheet work.
Startups use Mercury's API to build custom reconciliation scripts that match transactions to invoices, sync daily balances to internal dashboards, and trigger alerts when cash drops below runway thresholds. One engineering team automated their entire vendor payment workflow by connecting Mercury's API to their procurement system, cutting out weekly manual payment runs.
The API also powers integrations with accounting software. Instead of manually importing transactions or waiting for overnight syncs, your financial data flows in real-time, keeping your books current without exporting files or checking integration status.
The 2023 banking crisis changed how startups manage deposits overnight. Before March 2023, keeping 100% of funds with one bank was standard. After watching companies lose access to operating capital, splitting deposits became basic risk management, not optional overhead.
Startups now maintain two banking relationships to reduce concentration risk. When a frozen account could mean missed payroll, diversification stops being theoretical.
Mercury works as part of this approach because there are no maintenance fees for keeping a secondary account. The API lets you automatically move funds between banks based on balance rules. Setup takes days instead of weeks, so you can add Mercury as your backup without waiting for traditional bank approval cycles or disrupting current operations.
Waiting until month-end to understand your financial position doesn't work when you're burning $100K monthly. Legacy banks show pending transactions that take 3-5 days to clear, with balance updates that lag reality.
Mercury displays transactions the moment they occur. View account balances across all your accounts instantly, see exactly where money went today, and check your actual available cash without guessing which payments have cleared. The dashboard breaks down spending by category and vendor without manual work.
For founders tracking runway, this changes how you manage cash. Notice an unexpected spike in AWS costs this week, not next month. See contractor payments clear right away instead of wondering if the wire went through.
Running all your startup finances through a single checking account makes it hard to understand your true cash position. When payroll reserves, runway cushion, and operating expenses sit in one place, you need spreadsheets to track what's actually available to spend.
Mercury lets you create multiple checking and savings accounts under one login. Set up separate accounts for your six-month runway reserves, next payroll cycle, or department budgets. Each gets its own account number, so you can see exactly how much sits ready for payroll or how much marketing has left this quarter without filtering transactions.
The structure removes calculation work. Your reserve account shows real reserves, not a percentage of your main balance that exists only in a spreadsheet. Department accounts show actual spending without manual categorization.
Setup takes minutes per account with no fees or approval delays. Move money between accounts instantly through the dashboard, rebalancing as needs shift without wire fees or multi-day transfer windows.
Mercury's banking integrations sync transaction data across your financial stack without manual exports or CSV uploads. Connect Mercury to Stripe, QuickBooks, or accounting software like Puzzle, and payments flow automatically with merchant details, amounts, and dates already attached.
The Stripe connection preserves customer and invoice metadata when revenue hits your account. You'll see which customer paid, not just a bulk deposit, making revenue recognition trackable without spreadsheet cross-references. For SaaS companies processing hundreds of monthly transactions, this granular visibility saves hours of lookup work.
Mercury's integration with Puzzle delivers automated transaction categorization the moment money moves, keeping your books current between formal closes.
Standard FDIC insurance covers $250,000 per depositor per bank. If you just raised $2M, most of your operating capital sits uninsured in a single account.
Mercury's sweep network programs spread deposits across multiple partner banks, extending coverage to millions in FDIC insurance. Your full balance stays accessible through one login while funds distribute across institutions to stay within insurance limits at each bank.
This protection kicks in immediately. Wire $1.5M from a seed round on Friday, and the full amount receives insurance coverage by Monday through Mercury's network, not just the first $250K. For venture-backed companies holding investor capital, this removes the risk of keeping large cash positions in a single institution.
Mercury handles your banking, but raw transaction data doesn't show your burn rate or remaining runway. That's where Puzzle comes in.
Connect Mercury to Puzzle and transactions sync automatically with 98% categorized by AI. No CSV exports, no data entry, no reconciliation work. Mercury moves your money, Puzzle tells you what it means.
The combination creates real-time financial intelligence. See your current cash position, monthly burn, and runway updated daily as Mercury transactions flow through Puzzle's AI. Spot unusual spending patterns immediately and understand your financial health without waiting for month-end.
This eliminates the gap between banking activity and financial understanding. Mercury's zero-fee accounts protect your runway while Puzzle shows exactly how long it lasts.
Mercury handles your banking efficiently, but raw transactions don't tell you how long your runway lasts. That's where Puzzle comes in to connect your Mercury account and automatically categorize every transaction. You get real-time burn rate tracking and financial clarity without waiting for your accountant to close the books.
Most Mercury accounts get approved within 1-2 business days after applying online, which takes about 10 minutes. You can incorporate Friday, apply over the weekend, and start receiving payments by Tuesday (no branch visits or notarized documents required).
Mercury charges zero monthly maintenance fees, zero domestic wire fees, and zero transaction fees on standard accounts. For startups sending contractor payments or receiving investor wires, this removes $500-1,000 in annual banking costs that would otherwise drain your runway.
After the 2023 banking crisis, splitting deposits across two banks became standard risk management. Mercury works well as part of this strategy because there are no maintenance fees for secondary accounts, and you can set up automated transfers between banks based on balance rules.
Mercury's API lets you pull transaction data, account balances, and payment details programmatically to automate reconciliation, sync balances to dashboards, and trigger cash alerts. Technical founders use it to build custom workflows that eliminate manual CSV downloads and weekly payment runs.
Mercury displays transactions in real-time instead of showing pending items that take 3-5 days to clear, lets you create multiple sub-accounts to organize payroll reserves and runway separately without fees, and connects directly to accounting software like Puzzle for automated categorization that keeps your books current between month-end closes.
