
Ask HN: Best Bank for Startups? - cbisnett
We&#x27;ve been using Silicon Valley Bank for the last 4 years and while their services generally &quot;work&quot;, they aren&#x27;t the best. We&#x27;ve been working with SVB to setup a line-of-credit just to have in case we need it, and we recently talked with them about their Innovators card. Unfortunately their sales people cannot show you any kind of demo so that you can see how it works or what the UI looks like even. This is a tough ask as the only way to see it is to sign up for an account and start issuing cards. We also talked with Brex about their solution and even looked into Expensify&#x27;s card.<p>Brex was able to show us a demo and as part of the trial we attached our SVB account which causes a $0.01 deposit and withdrawal. After doing this we received an email from our SVB sales rep acknowledging the transaction: &quot;It looks like I see a penny test from Brex on June 3rd so it may be that you just set something up.&quot; I&#x27;m not sure what&#x27;s buried in the SVB ToS, but SVB sales reps looking into our transactions didn&#x27;t sit quite right with me. Then we told them that we decided to go with Brex because we liked the solution and not being able to get a demo from SVB made it basically a non-starter. A couple days later we get a call from a Managing Director and he tells us that the line-of-credit will need to be venture debt and backed by equity or warrants, which we&#x27;re not interested in since this is only a rainy-day LoC and we&#x27;ve got plenty of money in our SVB account. Fast forward to today and they tell us that they won&#x27;t give us the LoC anymore unless we also agree to use their Innovator card.<p>Basically I&#x27;m looking for other banks that are great to work with and understand how startups work and the needs they have. I&#x27;ve looked at Mercury, and we have an account there, but I was hesitant to move too much away from SVB because it &quot;just worked&quot;, but obviously now I&#x27;m reconsidering. Hopefully HackerNews has some good advice and recommendations.
======
immad
(I am the CEO of Mercury.com.)

Lots of people switch over from SVB to us. Happy to answer any questions you
have.

We go out of our way to be transparent in pricing, have great customers
service and "just work". We dont currently do LoCs though.

Also feel free to email me (my username AT mercury.com)

~~~
tujson
+1 for Mercury. Super simple signup, and great UI. Love that there's a mobile
app! Real nice to have virtual cards.

Only nitpick is when my co-founders linked their bank accounts to Mercury to
transfer money, Mercury displayed their personal account balances (after
unlinking their accounts, their personal balances no longer showed up). I had
to wire transfer since Plaid didn't work for my bank.

~~~
immad
Displaying personal balance - Thats come up before, will try to get a fix
prioritized for that.

~~~
quadrifoliate
> Displaying personal balance - Thats come up before, will try to get a fix
> prioritized for that.

Leaking information about a personal account when it has only been used
authorized for the purposes of transfer seems to be a P0 bug to me, from a
disinterested third-party point of view. If I authorize a transfer of $10k to
my startup and for some reason my co-founder is able to see that my personal
account balance at Bank of America is $400k, that sounds like...a massive leak
of information that I didn't authorize.

Or do I have a mistaken view of what the problem is?

~~~
immad
99% of the time Plaid functionality is used to transfer money from your
previous business bank account to Mercury. In that scenario it's useful to
have balance information.

Most people transfer money from personal account via another means (checks,
wire etc). Though agreed that it's bad when a personal account is used and the
balance is leaked to cofounders.

~~~
quadrifoliate
Ah I see, I had the typical use case wrong. Thanks for your response!

------
bberenberg
JP Morgan Chase. They aren't sexy. They don't have a great API. They don't
have a good UI. They're slow as shit to process your paperwork. Our rep calls
us every time even though I have asked him to email instead. They suck in
almost every single way you can imagine. But, they also tend to function like
a real bank, and outside the last few months, have treated us pretty well.

~~~
dhd415
I've had this same experience with Chase on my business accounts. They're
boring but attentive on the customer service side.

------
todsacerdoti
Mercury - [https://mercurybank.com](https://mercurybank.com) \- They also have
the best API available for a bank.

------
lfittl
I assume you know this, but just to mention it:

For issuing cards, you can use Stripe nowadays. If you're doing this as part
of your business (e.g. like Expensify is doing), its available to all US based
businesses: [https://stripe.com/issuing](https://stripe.com/issuing)

The more convenient Stripe Corporate Card (which sounds like that may be your
use case?) is still invite only: [https://stripe.com/docs/corporate-
card](https://stripe.com/docs/corporate-card)

(I myself am queued up for an invite on the Corporate Card, and using Chase
Credit Cards in the meantime, which are okay, but not great)

~~~
cbisnett
We are also in the invite queue for the Stripe Corporate Card, but decided to
make a switch as we didn't know how long the wait would be. Brex is working on
features for expense reporting and authorization is what were were told. While
I don't think it's on par with Expensify, maybe one day in the future it will
be which will mean one less service for us to manage.

------
esilverman
+1 for Mercury. We (FeaturePeek) started on SVB and it was a terrible
experience. Mercury has been great

------
cweagans
Azlo [https://www.azlo.com/](https://www.azlo.com/)

~~~
goatherders
Azlo has been sensational. CS picks up on just a couple rings. THe deposits go
in super fast. No overdraft charges. It's excellent.

------
markvdb
Related question: what bank would you go with for a super simple euro zone
llc?

The requirements are simple:

\- a proper EU based IBAN

\- SEPA bank transfer

\- SEPA direct debit

\- proper customer support

\- proper web experience

\- debit card

\- (preferably) limited credit card support

\- honest and transparent pricing

There's obviously the company's home country banks, but I'm specifically
wondering about banks offering EU wide services. Either I'm not looking well
enough or there isn't really a decent bank offering these services EU wide:

\- Many more traditional banks don't seem to be interested in working with
companies in different EU countries.

\- N26 doesn't seem to do llc's.

\- Revolut doesn't have a proper web client.

~~~
krn
> Revolut doesn't have a proper web client

I believe Revolut Business is primarily web based, unlike Revolut Personal:

[https://www.revolut.com/business/business-
account](https://www.revolut.com/business/business-account)

There is also Paysera, which offers instant SEPA transfers for EU companies:

[https://www.paysera.com/v2/en/paysera-
account](https://www.paysera.com/v2/en/paysera-account)

------
awad
First Republic has phenomenally great service and absolutely terrible tech,
UI, etc. It all boils down to what your needs are from your bank. FRB are not
great when it comes to lines, venture debt, etc but for day-to-day banking
it's nice to have a real person on the other side.

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surferbayarea
First Republic Bank

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blatherard
You might want to check out
[https://www.grasshopper.bank/](https://www.grasshopper.bank/), which is a
fairly new startup-focused bank based in NYC

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tmcpro
Take a look at banknovo.com

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nikivi
Monzo if you are UK based. Maybe US too.

[https://monzo.com/i/business/](https://monzo.com/i/business/)

~~~
raesene9
AFAIK Monzo are pulling back on their US business, so probably only UK for
now.

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tapmap
I have had SVB see transactions from Transferwise in my account and then call
me up and offer a better rate on their foreign transfer services. Interesting!

~~~
surferbayarea
You should switch to First Republic Forex account. We saved ~4% by switching
from Transferwise to FRB on our international transfers.

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jondishotsky
+1 for Mercury!

