Relay

Relay's core feature is the ability to create multiple checking accounts (they allow up to 20) within a single business account. Going back to Profit First, those multiple accounts make it easy to separate funds for things like payroll, taxes, operating expenses, and profit.

For small business owners who have relied on a single bank account in the past, this feature can be super helpful. Seeing money separated into specific categories makes it so much easier to understand what is actually available to spend.

That said, this concept is not unique to Relay. Other banking platforms (including our Top Pick, Mercury) also support multiple accounts and similar cash organization strategies, so it’s not a reason to choose Relay on its own.

Another core feature is their automatic transfer rules. We're huge fans of using automation to save time on tedious tasks, and this is definitely one of them.

For example, a business owner might configure Relay so that every time $10,000 comes in, 15% automatically moves to a tax account, 30% goes to payroll, and another portion goes to profit.

For business owners who struggle with cash management, this kind of automation can make a big difference. It essentially builds financial discipline directly into the banking system.

One HVAC business owner on Reddit described how they used to reach tax season and realize the money simply wasn’t there because everything had been sitting in one account and slowly getting spent. After switching to Relay, a portion of every payment immediately moved into a tax account, another to operating expenses, and another to profit.

This isn't unique to Relay, but this is the feature they lead most of their marketing with.

Relay has tools for paying vendors and managing bills. Businesses can forward invoices into a dedicated bill pay inbox, where Relay scans the invoice and generates a draft bill. This saves time compared to manually entering payment details and helps keep vendor payments organized.

You can also save vendor contacts and payment details, which makes recurring payments easier to manage. That said, their accounts payable and vendor payments workflows are much more manual and limited that other banks.

The main limitation here is that Relay does not include vendor onboarding tools. This means business owners still need to manually collect tax forms like W-9s from contractors and vendors.

If you work with many freelancers or contractors, the administrative work will become frustrating quickly (trust us, we've been there before we switched to Mercury). You pay a freelancer, and then during tax time, you'll realize you need their W-9. Whoops, now you need to email them to get it. Mercury does all of this automatically which is why we say it's built for actual scale.

Relay has a basic built-in expense management feature to help you track spending without needing a separate tool.

Team members can upload receipts directly from their phone or forward them by email, and Relay attaches them to the matching transaction automatically. You can also set receipt policies for debit card purchases, which means employees get reminders if they forget to upload proof of a purchase. This helps prevent the "end-of-month receipt hunt" that many small businesses deal with.

Relay also lets you categorize expenses and sync everything to accounting tools like QuickBooks Online, Xero, or Kick (our favorite AI accounting software).

That said, Relay's expense management is lightweight. It works well for small teams that just want basic spending visibility and receipt tracking, but it's not as robust as dedicated platforms like Ramp or BILL Spend & Expense, which offer deeper card controls, budgeting, and approval workflows.

You can send invoices and collect payments directly through Relay. Of course this is convenient for small service businesses that want basic invoicing without relying on separate accounting software.

You get the integrations you'd expect with Relaty. It integrates with QuickBooks Online, Xero, Kick, Gusto, Plaid, and Yodlee.

Connecting Relay with QuickBooks, Xero, or Kick means new transactions can flow directly into your accounting software as they occur so you're not left doing it manually.