Mercury vs Kick

Mercury is the best business banking platform for US companies. We've tried every business bank out there over the years, and Mercury is truly the best banking solution, regardless of whether you're a small business, startup or large enterprise.

The UI/UX is top-tier. Treasury accounts are built in. You can spin up additional checking accounts in seconds. Invoicing and bill pay actually feel smooth. It just works.

Allocating funds is handled with simple automations, so we're never thinking about setting aside cash for payroll or taxes.

And what you won't get with any other business is a free Mercury Personal account so your money can flow between business and personal accounts quickly and seamlessly. And guess what? Any of your employees can get a free Mercury Personal account too (usually $240/yr).

Mercury has turned us (and many others) into people who say, "I love my bank" and actually mean it.

• No monthly fees or minimums
• Excellent UI/UX
• Powerful sub-account automation
• Fast, simple invoicing and bill pay
• Strong integrations

• No physical branches
• No physical checkbooks
• Customer support is not instant

We all remember the days of spending an afternoon in a stuffy bank with folders full of paperwork just to open a business account. With Mercury, you can open an account online in only a few minutes, for free. There are no monthly fees or minimum balance requirements, and no fees on USD payments or transfers, so even if your business is just getting off the ground, Mercury's tools and features are accessible.

If you're someone who uses the "envelope method," you'll love Mercury's sub-accounts. Once your primary account is created, you can set up as many additional checking or savings accounts as you'd like.

Having this option shifts money management from reactive to automatic. Instead of budgeting in spreadsheets or creating reminders to set aside funds for taxes, use Mercury to create separate accounts for things like payroll and taxes, then let automatic transfer rules do the rest. It's simple, but it completely changes the way you think about cash management.

I actually enjoy creating invoices in Mercury, and I'm not exaggerating. It just has a simple, clutter free interface, that isn't distracting or doesn't make me jump though hoops just to get the task done.

Time to pay a vendor? Literally drag and drop the bill into your dashboard or forward it to your bill pay inbox, and Mercury automatically populates and scans it. Then, in just a few clicks, you can take care of sending the payment, categorizing the expense, and even setting up recurring payments. Invoices are similarly smooth and will have you on your way to getting paid in minutes

Mercury is not a traditional bank, but all checking and savings deposits are safe, sound, and FDIC-insured up to $5M through partner banks and sweep networks. Plus, your idle cash can earn interest instead of sitting at near-zero in a traditional bank.

Unlike a lot of the other high-yield investment options, Mercury Treasury makes transfers actually fast, even same-day.

We've been Mercury personal account users for a while now, and even paid their $240 annual fee for a while because we just wanted the same Mercury banking experience for personal use too.

But now, any Mercury business account user can get a free personal account, which is a huge bonus. Remember those quick, intuitive features and tools we mentioned earlier? You can use those to simplify your personal finances, too. Plus, with everything under one roof, transfers between your business and personal accounts are almost instant.

• Free: $0/mo. Best for startups and small businesses that need a powerful free business bank account (We're on this tier).
• Plus: $35/mo (or $29.90/mo billed annually). Best for growing businesses that want advanced invoicing, ACH debit collection, expense reimbursements for larger teams, and enhanced accounting automations.
• Pro: $350/mo (or $299/mo billed annually). Best for businesses with complex operations that need a relationship manager, unlimited invoicing via API, ACH debit with $0 transaction fees, and support for large teams.

Disclaimer: Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC. Deposit insurance covers the failure of an insured bank.

Kick is an AI-powered bookkeeping and accounting tool that took us from having a miserable "reconciling days" every month, to barely thinking about the books.

When we were using QuickBooks Online for 12 years, Alex would usually spend 12-ish hours every month just reconciling and fixing random issues. Kick cut that down to about 1 hour a month. That's because it plugs directly into your financial accounts, pulls in transactions automatically, and uses AI to keep everything organized. It is not just a huge timesaver, it also gives us the ability to actually sit back and trust our books.

If you're a founder managing your books, Kick is definitely a no-brainer. It’s also a great option for anyone managing multiple businesses because Kick allows for multi-entity support. This means you don't need a separate subscription for each business.

That said, it’s not built for every use case yet. It’s still limited when it comes to international businesses, multi-currency support, complex accrual accounting, or inventory-heavy operations. If you’re running a more advanced financial setup, traditional tools are still the safer option for now.

• Frees up time by taking over manual bookkeeping work (saved us 11 hours or so a month)
• Much easier to navigate than traditional accounting software like Quickbooks Online
• Automatically categorizes and reconciles transactions
• Direct integrations with modern financial tools like Mercury, Ramp, Gusto
• Supports multiple entities within a single, free account

• Only available to US-based businesses
• Limited support for more complex accounting like deep accrual models or long-term contracts
• Still evolving in certain integrations (e.g., brokerage accounts)

Unless you're an accountant, you probably didn't start your business so you could spend all your time monitoring and reconciling transactions.

But unfortunately that just becomes the reality when you're using something like QuickBooks to manage your finances. There's always something to check in on or fix, and accounting turns into a mood-ruining task that you didn't really sign up for in the first place.

Kick automatically pulls in transactions from connected accounts and categorizes those so reconciliation happens in the background, automatically, using AI 🫶. Over time, it learns from your adjustments and rules, so you're "fixing" less and less.

The AI saves you time and busy work, sure. But this really boils down to making it so you're not managing the system anymore.

If you're a multipreneur, the last thing you want to do is manage a handful of Quickbooks subscriptions and accounts. With Kick, you don't have to. You can add multiple businesses to Kick, and even personal accounts. Everything lives in one place, which makes managing multiple businesses a lot simpler. You also do not need to pay per entity, it all works under the same subscription.

You can take something like a single account (even inside a personal or shared bank account) and treat it as its own entity, with its own transactions and reporting. That means you don’t need to go set up a new bank account every time you start something new just to stay organized. And, everything is already segmented in a way that makes sense, so you're not trying to untangle things when tax time comes around.

We love that Kick focused on making direct integrations for the tools their customers actually use, instead of a ton of integrations that feel kind of bolted-on. The integrations make it so transactions to flow in and get matched up without any manual syncing. And, since the data is pulled in directly, there's a lot less duplication and inconsistencies (something we ran into a lot with QBO.)

• Free: $0/mo. Best for businesses just starting out or evaluating the product (up to $25k in annual expenses). This is a genuinely useful free tier, not just a trial.
• Basic: $35/mo ($420/yr). Best for small businesses that want more customization and automation beyond the basics.
• Plus: $125/mo (billed quarterly). Best for growing businesses that need deeper financial reporting and more control.
• Custom: Starts at $200/mo. Best for larger or more complex businesses that need dedicated support, tax services, and advanced accounting.

You can manage multiple businesses within Kick, so keep that in mind too (as you'd normally need to pay for separate subscriptions per business).