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. ⤵
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The spend management platform for mid-size teams (customizable virtual cards, budgeting, auto-reconciling, and expense reimbursement).
Ramp is one of the clear leaders in the spend/expense management, budgeting space, and accounting automation space (Oh and it's totally free 👀)
They have a great UI/UX, tons of reporting/insights features, and a super clean and fast search functionality to find exactly what you're looking for:
You need to have $25K sitting in your business bank account at the time of applying in order to be approved. That said, your credit limit is going to be relative to how much is in your bank account, so we still recommend that businesses who are going to have $50–100K sitting in their business bank accounts at all times consider this based on the credit limit you'd get otherwise.
Ramp has the same virtual card functionality (and physical cards for employees). You'll want to spin up a virtual card for each company you use with Ramp, and you can even restrict (lock) these cards to a specific merchant.
The rewards are pretty standard with others in the space, getting around up-to 1.5% on most categories, with a bit more in certain categories (higher % when making payments weekly—less if made bi-weekly or monthly).
Ramp is more so for larger teams, think a distributed remote team with employees all over the world. But with more employees, comes more need for insights and data on spending. Ramp allows you to see your company's spend all in one place. Further, they have AI insights which will alert you of cost saving opportunities like duplicate subscriptions, sudden increases in spend, and possible lower pricing plans available. We think this is super cool, and is a big reason why we'd recommend Ramp for teams with 30-40+ employees.
One bit that I noticed when using Ramp is that they are a bit more focused on SMS interactions instead of having a fully-featured mobile app (unlike that of Divvy for example). Ramp only has an iOS app and it's mainly just for taking photos of receipts and matching transactions.
This might be a positive for those who have employees that aren't as tech-savvy, and you just need them to text a receipt in for it to tie to the expense management side of things (something that Divvy doesn't allow for).
All-in-all, they are focused a bit more broadly than that of BILL Spend & Expense (Divvy), moving more into the accounting automation side of things and integrating with a few more accounting tools natively. They really have an impressive suite of tools.
If you're a larger team, apply for Ramp using this link. Just remember, you need to have $25K in your bank account to get approved.
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??)
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