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CEO of Mercury here. If you are looking for an alternative, we are 100% committed to businesses of all sizes: A) the smallest businesses can be the next big s

by immad 4y ago

CEO of Mercury here. If you are looking for an alternative, we are 100% committed to businesses of all sizes: A) the smallest businesses can be the next big startup B) We maintain strong unit economics at all sizes. We setup a landing page to get these customers onboarded quickly: https://mercury.com/partner/brex https://mercury.com/partner/brex

sivers 4y ago
I've founded many companies of many sizes, from 0 to 85 employees, over the last 25 years. I've used many business banks in many countries. (Wells, Citi, HSBC, ING, BoA, BNZ, OCBC, DBS, Wise, even private banks.) But I've never been so impressed and happy with my bank as I am with Mercury. Mercury continues to impress me, even though right now I'm a super-small-fry, their service, features, and attention are top-notch. I love them. I'm a Mercury fan.
- felipemnoa 4y ago
  I believe they are doing things right now that do not scale so that they can get reviews like yours. It is a strategy to create loyal customers at the beginning. I'm not sure but I think PG has talked about this strategy.
  - immad 4y ago
    Support is <5% of our revenue. If the product mostly does what it should then support costs shouldn’t be crazy. (Assuming that’s the part that you think is unscalable for us)
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      > If the product mostly does what it should then support costs shouldn’t be crazy. One of the huge benefits of not hacking your product together as fast as humanly possible!
- _vvhw 4y ago
  Wow, this is high praise coming from Derek Sivers. This should immediately be on Mercury's landing page. :)
- divyekapoor 4y ago
  +1 - have had a super solid amazing experience with Mercury. Highly recommended.
stanislavb 4y ago
I would add that Mercury seems to be the top competitor of Brex (SaaSHub https://www.saashub.com/brex-alternatives https://www.saashub.com/brex-alternatives). @immad, if you verify Mercury's listing on SaaSHub, I can organize featuring it on the newsletter. Cheers!
ghufran_syed 4y ago
I have been with mercury for around 3 years and very pleased with the service and the software.
JaakkoP 4y ago
+1 to Mercury. And from the what I’ve seen from other founders / CEO using you all, I’m not alone! Incredibly easy setup, great UI/UX and no nickeling and diming with fees of any kind. Makes me wonder what are your unit economics like as you obviously will be making losses from the very smallest of customers?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rawtxapp 4y ago
Mercury is awesome! Not sure if this is right venue for feedback, but if only you could offer ACH without Plaid (which feels like a huge invasion of privacy), it would be even more awesome. Wire transfers cost 20$ each, depositing by check feels like the 1990s and takes time to clear.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  I assume they will support FedNow instant payments as they’re rolled out over the next 18-24 months. Those payments cost the financial services provider 5 cents per transaction up to between $100k and $500k (depending on configuration with the Fed). They settle immediately 24/7/365. Wires via FedWire will be reserved for amounts between $500k and $50M, which doesn’t sound like a $20 fee would be unreasonable for to account for human review of the transfer. Edit: I didn’t even know Mercury doesn’t charge for sending wires. As a customer, I’m delighted.
  - MaxGabriel 4y ago
    (I'm CTO of Mercury) To clarify, when rawtxapp said "Wire transfers cost 20$ each", they probably mean wiring _to_ Mercury from their bank costs $20. Mercury doesn't charge for sending wires. The reason they're mentioning the 3rd party bank fees is they'd prefer to use ACH pull to have Mercury take the money directly from their existing bank account (similar to how your gym or electric company might do). We do offer this, but only if you use a service called Plaid to link your third party bank account. This involves typing your bank's username/password/2FA into a Plaid iframe on our website, which confirms it with the third party bank. If you've used Venmo, that's using Plaid under the hood to link your bank account. Ok, all that said, my question for rawtxapp: are you mostly asking for us to verify 3rd party bank accounts via microdeposit instead? I agree it's less privacy invasive, but, definitely pretty slow and 1990s like you said about checks. I'm not sure of the security either. I'm somewhat hoping it's less of an issue as more banks move to doing OAuth in Plaid, instead of sharing passwords. Capital One, Wells Fargo, and Chase do this now (we should really move to doing it too).
    - 4y ago
toomuchtodo 4y ago
+1, I use mercury exclusively for business accounts, y’all are top notch. Congrats on the new clients headed your way. Edit: already have a landing page up for migrating Brex folks, chef kiss
eins1234 4y ago
While it's great to maintain good enough unit economics to not have to pull stunts like this one, it's not necessarily always a plus from a customer perspective. Comparing Mercury and Brex/Ramp specifically, Mercury is notably missing rewards on transactions, while Ramp has unlimited 1.5% cashback, and Brex has a bunch of multipliers ranging from 7x to 1x points. If I have access to all of the options above, it would be financially irresponsible for me to spend through Mercury. Would like to see Mercury get more competitive here even at the cost of less cushy unit economics. EDIT: Some of the replies here seem to think Brex is shutting down entirely? Please read the actual article and the founder response above. They're only shutting down operations for small businesses, presumably because that's the only segment that doesn't have sustainable unit economics. % rewards on spend from interchange revenue has been around for decades. The model works, given the right set of customers and credit risk profiles.
- immad 4y ago
  This comment is so ironic. Love it.
  - eins1234 4y ago
    Nice to see you taking feedback seriously.
    - immad 4y ago
      Okay. We don’t have a credit card right now, only debit. For small businesses doing high reward credit cards is not a sustainable business. Which is why Brex is shutting them down.
      - eins1234 4y ago
        That's totally understandable, for the small business segment. I was just saying that for a VC-backed tech startup, the lack of rewards is a huge turn-off, compared to some of the other options for spending available to us.
batuhanicoz 4y ago
I tried to open a Mercury account on May 22 and still waiting for a response :( I was happily using Brex until now. Any suggestions to speed up the waiting?
- ptomato 4y ago
  They just rejected me; I'm guessing single-owner LLCs are a no go.
chef0 4y ago
1000%, amazing startup banking partner. Ramp has also been amazing for expense management!
dopeboy 4y ago
Unless that business is in crypto, in which case you'll freeze their account. This happened to us, which halted our payroll and hurt us. We had to scramble to find an alternative, which is now Brex. To Mercury's credit, their staff was responsive the entire time in helping us transition. But the fact that they couldn't give an ETA on when things would resolve with their partner bank was distressing for us.
- friendzis 4y ago
  I do not think it is fair to complain about regulated banking when you yourself deliberately do stuff with crypto. Even more so when you mention that this particular institution was helpful with resolution out of the hole you dug yourself into. I don't want to start a debate on how crypto should be treated, but currently it is treated the way it is.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    > you yourself deliberately do stuff with crypto It's...their business? Also, responsive ≠ helpful.
  - dopeboy 4y ago
    They should have refused to take me in as a customer. Also, no hole was dug into. Their partner bank, Evolve, decided one day we were too risky of a business.
55555 4y ago
Banks that have their own banking license are better to work with imo. I hope you get one one day.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  What part of their soul do they have to sell to achieve that, and maintain it?
reverseprefs 4y ago
We’ve put $millions through Brex cash/cards and will leave over this. What’s the best deal Mercury can offer us to switch? yetis-extreme-0j@icloud.com
moneywoes 4y ago
Why is the pricing so opaque? Lets say I have a small LLC with a couple of employees. Where do I see how much that costs?
- ryanwiggins 4y ago
  Mercury.com/pricing but spoiler: it doesn’t cost you anything (Disclaimer: I work for Mercury!)
mritchie712 4y ago
mercury is 10/10, happy customer here.

by immad 4y ago

sivers 4y ago

I've founded many companies of many sizes, from 0 to 85 employees, over the last 25 years. I've used many business banks in many countries. (Wells, Citi, HSBC, ING, BoA, BNZ, OCBC, DBS, Wise, even private banks.) But I've never been so impressed and happy with my bank as I am with Mercury. Mercury continues to impress me, even though right now I'm a super-small-fry, their service, features, and attention are top-notch. I love them. I'm a Mercury fan.

felipemnoa 4y ago
I believe they are doing things right now that do not scale so that they can get reviews like yours. It is a strategy to create loyal customers at the beginning. I'm not sure but I think PG has talked about this strategy.
- immad 4y ago
  Support is <5% of our revenue. If the product mostly does what it should then support costs shouldn’t be crazy. (Assuming that’s the part that you think is unscalable for us)
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    > If the product mostly does what it should then support costs shouldn’t be crazy. One of the huge benefits of not hacking your product together as fast as humanly possible!
_vvhw 4y ago
Wow, this is high praise coming from Derek Sivers. This should immediately be on Mercury's landing page. :)
divyekapoor 4y ago
+1 - have had a super solid amazing experience with Mercury. Highly recommended.

stanislavb 4y ago

I would add that Mercury seems to be the top competitor of Brex (SaaSHub https://www.saashub.com/brex-alternatives https://www.saashub.com/brex-alternatives). @immad, if you verify Mercury's listing on SaaSHub, I can organize featuring it on the newsletter. Cheers!

ghufran_syed 4y ago

I have been with mercury for around 3 years and very pleased with the service and the software.

JaakkoP 4y ago

+1 to Mercury. And from the what I’ve seen from other founders / CEO using you all, I’m not alone! Incredibly easy setup, great UI/UX and no nickeling and diming with fees of any kind. Makes me wonder what are your unit economics like as you obviously will be making losses from the very smallest of customers?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rawtxapp 4y ago

Mercury is awesome! Not sure if this is right venue for feedback, but if only you could offer ACH without Plaid (which feels like a huge invasion of privacy), it would be even more awesome. Wire transfers cost 20$ each, depositing by check feels like the 1990s and takes time to clear.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
I assume they will support FedNow instant payments as they’re rolled out over the next 18-24 months. Those payments cost the financial services provider 5 cents per transaction up to between $100k and $500k (depending on configuration with the Fed). They settle immediately 24/7/365. Wires via FedWire will be reserved for amounts between $500k and $50M, which doesn’t sound like a $20 fee would be unreasonable for to account for human review of the transfer. Edit: I didn’t even know Mercury doesn’t charge for sending wires. As a customer, I’m delighted.
- MaxGabriel 4y ago
  (I'm CTO of Mercury) To clarify, when rawtxapp said "Wire transfers cost 20$ each", they probably mean wiring _to_ Mercury from their bank costs $20. Mercury doesn't charge for sending wires. The reason they're mentioning the 3rd party bank fees is they'd prefer to use ACH pull to have Mercury take the money directly from their existing bank account (similar to how your gym or electric company might do). We do offer this, but only if you use a service called Plaid to link your third party bank account. This involves typing your bank's username/password/2FA into a Plaid iframe on our website, which confirms it with the third party bank. If you've used Venmo, that's using Plaid under the hood to link your bank account. Ok, all that said, my question for rawtxapp: are you mostly asking for us to verify 3rd party bank accounts via microdeposit instead? I agree it's less privacy invasive, but, definitely pretty slow and 1990s like you said about checks. I'm not sure of the security either. I'm somewhat hoping it's less of an issue as more banks move to doing OAuth in Plaid, instead of sharing passwords. Capital One, Wells Fargo, and Chase do this now (we should really move to doing it too).
  - 4y ago

toomuchtodo 4y ago

+1, I use mercury exclusively for business accounts, y’all are top notch. Congrats on the new clients headed your way. Edit: already have a landing page up for migrating Brex folks, chef kiss

eins1234 4y ago

While it's great to maintain good enough unit economics to not have to pull stunts like this one, it's not necessarily always a plus from a customer perspective. Comparing Mercury and Brex/Ramp specifically, Mercury is notably missing rewards on transactions, while Ramp has unlimited 1.5% cashback, and Brex has a bunch of multipliers ranging from 7x to 1x points. If I have access to all of the options above, it would be financially irresponsible for me to spend through Mercury. Would like to see Mercury get more competitive here even at the cost of less cushy unit economics. EDIT: Some of the replies here seem to think Brex is shutting down entirely? Please read the actual article and the founder response above. They're only shutting down operations for small businesses, presumably because that's the only segment that doesn't have sustainable unit economics. % rewards on spend from interchange revenue has been around for decades. The model works, given the right set of customers and credit risk profiles.

immad 4y ago
This comment is so ironic. Love it.
- eins1234 4y ago
  Nice to see you taking feedback seriously.
  - immad 4y ago
    Okay. We don’t have a credit card right now, only debit. For small businesses doing high reward credit cards is not a sustainable business. Which is why Brex is shutting them down.
    - eins1234 4y ago
      That's totally understandable, for the small business segment. I was just saying that for a VC-backed tech startup, the lack of rewards is a huge turn-off, compared to some of the other options for spending available to us.

batuhanicoz 4y ago

I tried to open a Mercury account on May 22 and still waiting for a response :( I was happily using Brex until now. Any suggestions to speed up the waiting?

ptomato 4y ago
They just rejected me; I'm guessing single-owner LLCs are a no go.

chef0 4y ago

1000%, amazing startup banking partner. Ramp has also been amazing for expense management!

dopeboy 4y ago

Unless that business is in crypto, in which case you'll freeze their account. This happened to us, which halted our payroll and hurt us. We had to scramble to find an alternative, which is now Brex. To Mercury's credit, their staff was responsive the entire time in helping us transition. But the fact that they couldn't give an ETA on when things would resolve with their partner bank was distressing for us.

friendzis 4y ago
I do not think it is fair to complain about regulated banking when you yourself deliberately do stuff with crypto. Even more so when you mention that this particular institution was helpful with resolution out of the hole you dug yourself into. I don't want to start a debate on how crypto should be treated, but currently it is treated the way it is.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  > you yourself deliberately do stuff with crypto It's...their business? Also, responsive ≠ helpful.
- dopeboy 4y ago
  They should have refused to take me in as a customer. Also, no hole was dug into. Their partner bank, Evolve, decided one day we were too risky of a business.

55555 4y ago

Banks that have their own banking license are better to work with imo. I hope you get one one day.

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
What part of their soul do they have to sell to achieve that, and maintain it?

reverseprefs 4y ago

We’ve put $millions through Brex cash/cards and will leave over this. What’s the best deal Mercury can offer us to switch? yetis-extreme-0j@icloud.com

moneywoes 4y ago

Why is the pricing so opaque? Lets say I have a small LLC with a couple of employees. Where do I see how much that costs?

ryanwiggins 4y ago
Mercury.com/pricing but spoiler: it doesn’t cost you anything (Disclaimer: I work for Mercury!)

mritchie712 4y ago

mercury is 10/10, happy customer here.