Novo vs Brex

Novo it works like a normal business checking account: once you've given someone your routing and account numbers, they can initiate ACH pulls into or out of your account, and you’re relying on your own monitoring plus Novo's dispute process if something sketchy shows up.

With that, Novo covers the basics for fund safety (coverage up to $250K), but you do not get extra protection beyond standard FDIC insurance. Unlike Mercury and Relay, they do not automatically distribute your funds across multiple banks.

This should tell you a lot: they are building for businesses with small balances and expect their customers to hold relatively small amounts (think freelancers and solopreneurs).

Their customers usually hold somewhere between $5K–$100K in their account, so if you plan to scale your business, it is better to skip Novo. And in general, since other banking solutions are free too, you might as well use Mercury since it has a better user experience all around.

Novo has no interest-bearing savings account and no treasury product.

Their business checking pays 0% APY and they don’t offer any built-in way to move cash into higher-yield investments or a separate savings account.

Think of Novo as purely an operational checking account, which is why we don't recommend it for any business that intends to scale.

While you can add payees (vendors, contractors) to Novo, there is no self-service vendor onboarding like the other banks have (e.g. no secure link where vendors can enter in their payment details and no automatic collection of W-9s).

Unlike with other banks, Novo won't automatically scrape your invoices and enter them into the system.

Novo's target audience seems to be more freelancers who don't need to often make payments to others, so if you're a growing business, skip Novo.

Novo will write and mail checks on your behalf, however if you need to attach a PDF or form, you're out of luck and will need to figure out another way outside of Novo. This is a bummer if you're trying to send in something like a government form.

Incoming domestic wires are free, although outgoing domestic wires are $30.

International wires are handled through their Wise integration, and you will need to pay the fee's associated.

Novo offers basic invoicing capabilities, although the user experience is not as smooth as with other banks.

Novo gives you a single business checking account per entity, but you can create up to 20 "Reserves," which are internal budgeting buckets for things like taxes, payroll, profit, and expenses.

But heads up, Reserves are not separate accounts or sub‑accounts, they have no unique account/routing numbers, all funds remain part of one Total Balance.

Novo Reserves let you automatically allocate a percentage of each incoming deposit into specific Reserves, which is good for simple Profit‑First‑style budgeting (e.g., 25% of all future deposits to Taxes). However, those rules only move money inside the one checking account into non‑account "envelopes". You can't set target balances like with Mercury and Relay (e.g. when my envelope reaches X amount, transfer money).

Novo lets you open a separate business checking account for each business as long as each has its own EIN, but you need a separate login for each entity, so there’s no single dashboard where you can quickly toggle between multiple businesses under one username.

Novo is business‑only, there is no Novo personal banking product.

With Novo, when you add another user to your account, you're granting them full access and account‑owner‑level privileges. This means they can transfer and withdraw funds since Novo doesn't offer partial or read‑only access.

This is much less safe and protected than other banking solutions out there, which is why if you have a team we don't recommend using Novo.

Novo does not have rule‑based approvals for payments, again making it subpar for any business with a growing team.

Novo's interface is simple to use, although it's not as modern or thoughtful as other banking solutions available.

With Brex Vault, deposits can receive up to $6M in FDIC insurance through it's network of partner banks, and you can set basic controls around incoming ACH debits to reduce the risk of unauthorized transfers.

That said, the overall setup of it all feels more like it was tacked on to check a box, that is banking, versus them actually trying to innovate and set a new standard in the space.

The biggest concern right now is that there's quite a bit of long-term uncertainty here around Brex because they were acquired by Capital One, which could eventually lead to the product being folded into Capital One's more outdated banking stack. In-fact, many startup founders and business owners we know have moved off Brex since this announcement.

So while Brex is technically safe and secure as a platform, it doesn't feel quite as focused or purpose-built around the core banking experience as Mercury, and there's a lot of uncertainty around it right now especially.

Brex lets you earn some yield on idle cash, but the setup is fairly basic. Funds are placed into a government money market fund (DGVXX), and you can move money between checking and treasury without too much friction.

The main downside is that Brex essentially gives you one default fund rather than a broader treasury options like Mercury allows for. Which also makes sense, because unlike Mercury, Brex is less of a banking solution, so this it more bolted on functionality just to check the box in this area, versus innovating on the experience.

Brex can move money, but the whole experience feels like banking was added as an afterthought.

Yes, you can send and receive ACH, wires, and checks. You can onboard vendors through a secure link, collect W-9s, upload invoices into bill pay, and add approval flows. So on paper, there's a decent amount of functionality.

The problem is that once you actually start using it, the whole thing feels bolted on. To us, it feels much more like an expense management platform that added banking later, rather than a banking product that was built from the ground up to make transferring funds seamless. Even the way Brex frames it as a "cash management account" instead of a bank account kinda gives that away.

While Brex has native invoices, payment links, ACH/wire payments, and even ACH direct debit, it just feels unpolished an unintuitive. Compared to Mercury, it just feels old.

Not to mention, if you're using one of the newer AI accounting tools, the limitations become even more obvious. For us, that was a complete deal breaker. We use Kick, and it integrates directly with Ramp (virtual cards) and Mercury (banking), but not Brex. So unless you're cool with not exploring the world of AI accounting tools, I'd say you're better off skipping Brex.

Brex is more focused on finance‑team‑heavy companies rather than small teams.

Brex actually goes very far on the "many accounts" front: if you're approved for a Brex business account (you need a $50k bank minimum, or $1 million in revenue), you can create up to 240 separate checking accounts under one EIN, each with its own account and routing number so you can separate cash for things like payables, receivables, payroll, and tax.

But you don't get a card for each account like you would with a bank. Since Brex is an expense management software, you just spend on cards and they are all tied to one "entity" where payments come from.

Admins can set "auto‑transfer rules" per checking account, like "always keep this account at $100K" but you are unable to set auto-transfer rules like "every time money lands, automatically slice 30% tax, 20% for payroll, etc to different buckets."

All of your Brex business accounts banking (checking, treasury, vault) are tied to a single primary legal entity, and deposits must be in that primary entity's name.

If you want a completely separate Brex business account for another legal entity, you have to apply again and run it as a separate account, rather than just adding another full banking "workspace" under one login the way Mercury and Ramp allow for multiple entities.

There is no Brex personal banking solution so you can't manage your personal finances under one login (we are obsessed with Mercury Personal Banking, which is why we use Mercury for both business + personal).

Brex is very strong on roles and permissions: you get Account admins (full banking + payments), Card admins, Finance admins, plus more limited roles like Employee, Reimbursement‑only, and Auditor, and on top of that you can create granular custom roles that decide exactly who can "manage accounts & payments" versus just view data.

For each Brex checking account, you can toggle on payment approvals, set a minimum amount that requires approval, and choose one or more users who must approve any outbound payment or transfer above that threshold.

There's a lot of functionality, but it still feels more pieced together than purpose-built.

Brex's interface is fine, but the banking UX just doesn't feel like the main product.

It's relatively modern, and you can usually get to what you need without fighting with it, but once you're actually trying to do banking things, it feels like you're navigating a platform that was built for spend/expense management first, with banking being added in as an afterthought.

The biggest friction is that your cash experience is split across checking, treasury, and vault, so even simple questions like "where's our money?" can require some digging. And while search generally helps, it doesn't fix the constant underlying feeling that the banking interface is more of a secondary layer.

All-in-all, it just doesn't feel like a bank that obsessed over making money movement and visibility of your cash super easy, unlike dedicated banking apps like Mercury.