From the beginning, we’ve built Mercury with a partner bank business model. This allows us to focus on product innovation for over 100K startup customers and rely on FDIC-insured partner banks for an additional layer of safety and security. We recognize the broader macro banking uncertainty given recent events related to crypto, so we wanted to share more on how these partner relationships work.
At Mercury, we have two partner banks: Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust. Both of these banks are US-based, FDIC-insured, and regulated by multiple entities including the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, and their respective state bank departments. These banks are subject to regular audits, and by extension, Mercury is also regularly audited by our bank partners. Any lending our partners do is subject to stress testing, stringent capital requirements, and regulatory oversight. Neither of our partner banks hold any cryptocurrency on their balance sheets or make crypto loans. In fact, they are distinctly different from crypto exchanges that lack FDIC-insurance and regulatory oversight.
Since we have multiple FDIC-insured partner banks, eligible customers are able to move money between our partner banks if they choose. If you have questions about your partner bank, please reach out to [email protected].
All other financial products we offer are also vetted with stability and security top of mind. We work with a Vanguard mutual fund that invests in US Government T-bills via our SIPC-insured Treasury product, and we encourage all of our customers to weigh liquidity, risk, and yield when creating their cash management strategy. Vanguard is a registered Investment Advisor regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and investments in our Treasury product are held at Apex Clearing Corp, a FINRA regulated broker-dealer.
At Mercury, we encourage product-led thinking across the entire company, which extends to our best-in-class compliance and risk team. This in-house team of 80 people (and growing) works hand in hand with fraud and security engineers to build products, tools, and alerts that automatically flag suspicious activity. We’ve gone a step further than many financial institutions and innovated on core security experiences – for example, we enforce multi-factor authentication by default, never settling for insecure methods like SMS. We’ve prioritized data security and obtained SOC 2 certification and maintain PCI compliance. And we’ve built product features like auto-transfer rules that sweep money from an AR account to your main checking account, so you don’t have to worry about giving out your checking account number to get paid.
The partner bank model has allowed us to innovate faster and focus on delivering an unparalleled product experience, while simultaneously keeping our customers’ funds secure and regulated. Just 3.5 years into Mercury’s history, we’re serving more than 100K startups and are currently profitable and well capitalized. We’re looking forward to continuing to support our customers – thanks for being a part of this journey and for trusting us.
Immad Akhund, CEO and co-founder