Ramp vs Novo

Ramp's Business Account offers multimillion-dollar FDIC insurance through its partner bank, meaning deposits are spread across multiple institutions rather than a single bank, much like most other modern banking solutions.

Ramp does give decent control over external ACH debits, allowing the ability for all debits, trusted vendors, or even granular approval before outside pulls are accepted.

The only problem is, when approval is required, the debit can still initially post to the account and then be reversed if it isn't approved in time. This means you're not exactly preventing the transaction from happening in the first place.

So while Ramp offers strong protection compared to most fintech accounts, it doesn't quite reach the level of proactive control that Mercury provides. The safeguards are better than most, but they're not as tightly built into the payment workflow itself.

The point is, Ramp is primarily an expense management solution, so when it comes to sending/receiving fund protections, they're pretty good. But when it comes to deeper banking protection features, you're better off using proper banking solution.

Ramp does offer a way to earn yield on idle cash, but it's not really designed as a core banking feature. So while you can place funds into government money market funds and other short-term fixed income portfolios, the setup feels more like a treasury add-on inside Ramp's broader expense management platform rather than a truly native banking feature.

So while the capability is there, it doesn't feel quite as simple or integrated as the best banking platforms built specifically around managing operating cash, like Mercury.

Ramp does a good job handling day-to-day payments inside its business account. Allowing all of the basic things like ACH transfers, wires, checks, and manage vendor payments.

That said, most teams actually use Ramp (credit cards) alongside a dedicated banking solution. That's what we do. So this is where the confusion begins. While Ramp has many overlapping features that banks have, it's in the details that the limitations become clear.

An example of that is when it comes to your accounting software. The thing that your bank needs to deeply integrate with on all levels. Well, if you're using one of the newer AI accounting software solutions, then you need to also be mindful around what exactly an "integration with Ramp" actually means.

Take Kick for example, the AI accounting software we use. While Ramp integrates with it, it only integrates with the corporate credit card functionality, not the invoicing and bill pay functionality. But on the other hand, our business bank, Mercury, integrates with Kick no problem.

So while Ramp does a pretty great job here, there's just a lot that unravels when you start viewing it as your banking solution, and why most companies will use a dedicated bank alongside Ramp.

Ramp is primarily an expense management solution (it's fantastic at that), but when it comes to banking, this is an area where you start to see it's limitations.

Ramp lets you open multiple "Ramp Business Accounts" per company, and you can spin up extra virtual account numbers that all are connected to the same balance. But it doesn't work like a traditional bank, where you can have many accounts with cards associated with each account.

All Ramp cards are corporate charge/credit cards tied to the entity, not true debit cards tied 1:1 to each deposit account. You don’t get 20 separate "bucket accounts" each with its own dedicated debit card the way you can with other banks.

Since Ramp is primarily expense management, you spend on Ramp cards, and then pay those statements from whichever single funding account you choose (a Ramp Business Account or an external bank).

Ramp cannot do “good banking automation” for SMBs. It cannot take deposit and automatically split it into multiple buckets (e.g. 30% tax, 20% payroll, etc).

It's banking automations are more like "Keep this Ramp Business Account Balance at $100k, if it drops below, pull funds from another external account", or if my account goes over $200K, automatically transfer the extra into a Ramp Investment Account.

You can manage multiple entities under one login and map different Ramp Business Accounts and external bank connections to each one, so you're not constantly logging in and out between companies.

But it stops at business, there is no Ramp personal banking product (we are obsessed with Mercury Personal Banking, which is why we use Mercury for both business + personal).

Ramp does have a roles system around who can see your Ramp Business Account and who can move money out of it. Admins control everything, while more limited roles can be set up mainly for viewing balances and downloading statements.

You can set up Ramp approvals when you send money through Ramp’s own payment screens (like ACH or wires you create inside Ramp), and you can choose who has to approve those specific payments before they're sent.

But there's no simple, bank‑wide rule like "any transfer over 10,000 dollars from this account, no matter how it’s created, must be approved by a founder," which you can set up with tools like Mercury.

Ramp has an incredibly simple and modern UX, and you can quickly find what you're looking for with their universal search (CMD + K), but in that, it's clear that it was built with banking as just an add-on.

So the majority of the sidebar is dedicated to expense management-type features (which makes sense, since it's primarily an expense management solution), and that's where it gets less props in this specific area.

It's definitely one of the better banking UX experiences, for a software that isn't primarily a bank.

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.