We love Mercury as our business banking solution, that said, if you're looking for the best expense management software, you should check out our BILL Spend & Expense vs Ramp comparison instead.
Mercury has some expense management features, but pale in comparison to what BILL S&E and Ramp have out of the box. Even if Mercury had feature-parity, we would still use it alongside BILL or Ramp.
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
.webp)
BILL Spend & Expense (Formerly Divvy) The spend management platform for teams of all sizes (customizable virtual cards, budgeting, auto-reconciling, and expense reimbursement).
I'm sure you've heard of a business credit card? Divvy is a replacement for your typical corporate card. It's totally free to use (no annual fee), you get rewards and it has a much more comprehensive feature set, giving you the ability to create virtual credit cards for each vendor with spending limits. Further, Divvy is an expense management solution. Bought a new marketing software? Categorize it and when integrated with Quickbooks Online, it will automatically reconcile your books for you.
Simply put, if you are a business owner living in the United States, you are missing out if you're not using an expense management solution + a divvy business credit card. There are other players in the market, and we've used all of the core competitors (Ramp, Brex, Expensify, and Airbase), and we're here to tell you to look no further than Divvy (newly rebranded to BILL Spend & Expense). (Did we mention it's totally free? 👀)
Divvy gives us so much control when it comes to our spending. We can easily create a virtual credit card, set a budget and Quickbooks category within seconds for each different vendor. We simply set a budget for each credit card for the exact amount that we know will be charged. If a subscription service decides to increase their pricing and charge our card, it will decline. And we like that, because we want to be the one deciding if someone should charge us more or not. 💪
Because we're able to put virtual cards down with each vendor, Divvy's allowed us (and our vendor) to actually catch a person that committed fraud by stealing and using our credit card 🤯 Of course, the employee of our vendor was fired. Catching them would have been impossible to pin down if we had a generic credit card on file. We share this story in this 1 minute video.
Have multiple employees that need their own corporate card? Create a card for them and set a spending limit, that's all you need to do. You can change the spending limit for each employee, make it $50 or $500, Divvy cards allow you to be flexible. If they leave the company, simply freeze the card (you have total control—just think of what the process is like with a typically corporate card. Issuing a new card for an employee is an annoying process, as is cancelling it). Not to mention the positive affect it has on your employees, as they get to feel empowered and like a trusted part of the team.
The rewards are pretty standard with others in the business credit card space, getting somewhere around 1–1.5% on all categories, with a bit more in certain categories (higher % when making payments weekly—less if made bi-weekly or monthly).
One customer that we recommended Divvy to started using it and quickly saw his reward balance grow. He decided to use the reward funds as Christmas bonuses for his employees. He said, "it's money that's just sitting there, and if I can give them a little extra to take home at the end of the year, it's something cool I get to do."
Travel rewards are also a perk with Divvy as they are partnered with TravelPerk. While we haven't cashed in our travel rewards yet, it's a great option for our next company retreat!
Out of all the competitors, Divvy has the best UI/UX and does a fantastic job at natively integrating with QuickBooks Online (for automating your expense reconciling process), and handles team budgeting like a dream:
Divvy allows you to create a virtual credit card and map it to the respective category + set up an email forwarding filter within your email once, and every single time the card is charged, your QuickBooks Online is already reconciled and up-to-date with a PDF of the receipt.
The Divvy eligibility requirements are way more accessible than that of Ramp and Brex (who both make their account criteria unnecessarily high). Divvy is great for startups and teams of all sizes, even if you're just getting your business started.
Divvy is the best tool in the spend management, business credit cards, budgeting, and basic accounting automation suite for most businesses of all sizes.
The modern business bank built for teams of all sizes. What if you could actually enjoy your bank? With Mercury, you will.
I have tried literally every single business bank out there over the years. Not the boring big banks with an awful banking experience (I've tried those too), I mean the modern business banks when the advent of Neo banks started to exist (think tech layer atop a traditional bank).
I first started my journey with Seed.co bank in 2016—and it was amazing. No fees, modern banking experience, integrations. It was the closest thing to Simple Bank but for business (for anyone that remembers Simple). I'll cut to the chase though, 2 years later I was greeted with this email (and no—you don't lose your money when this happens) 😅
So then the search began again, unable to settle on a traditional business bank after what I experienced with Seed. A few days after Seed announced they were closing, I came across Azlo. The promise was everything that Seed was, and more. And to that they delivered. I loved them. Over the years even built a close relationship with their product and API team—and yes, modern banks especially have proper product teams—blew my mind 🤯
Got just over a couple years out of them before they were acquired by one of their largest investors (the traditional bank they were built atop—BBVA Compass). Not a huge deal right? Wrong. They trashed all of their tech (genuinely no idea why), before ultimately selling them off a second time to PNC. I somehow just went from having a modern business bank back to having an awful, tech-challenged business bank again.
While it was a lot to go through, these 2 faithful banks got me from 2016–2021, and all I knew for certain is that banks could do better. So alas my search began again. 👋 Hello Bank Novo. They were pretty good, I used them for 6 some odd months, but was constantly frustrated with their non-standard QuickBooks Online integration, which was different from what Azlo had to offer (it didn't use the QBO bank feed, just synced over directly to chart of accounts, so all the smart auto-matching features of QBO no longer worked).
I was fed up, I missed Azlo. And then I ended my journey with Bank Novo in the tail end of 2021 after finding Mercury. They were barebones: no mobile app, basic web app, and QBO integration coming soon 👀 (I was skeptical, but gave them a shot nonetheless). Lo and behold, they managed to do everything, well, better...
Their QBO integration is top-notch, their UI/UX is the best of any bank I've used, and their feature-set is incredible. Baked in treasury accounts where you can get high-interest on the funds sitting in your account, quick spinning up of additional checking accounts, virtual and physical credit cards (still way prefer Divvy for this), streamlined bill pay. It just does everything. Incredibly well.
They are lightyears ahead of what Seed and Azlo ever were, and a completely different category than Brex (please... Don't use Brex as your business bank—they aren't in any way a proper bank...)
That said, if you're on the edge, look no further. This is the best business bank available regardless of if you're a small business or large enterprise. Don't believe me? Go check it out for yourself with their interactive demo page (I mean... how cool is that?! And why don't more companies do this??)
.svg)
.jpg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg){kind=icon}
.svg)
.svg)
