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Review: Mercury Personal Banking

I've been a reluctant Bank of America customer for over a decade. My parents chose BofA, so I chose BofA. Migrating to Chase or Wells Fargo is more of the same -- not worth the switching cost.

Am I really a "customer" when they charge -0.01% interest to hold my money?

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BofA is clunky. Their physical branches seem simultaneously overstaffed and understaffed. Everybody there is cordial yet confused. I would never visit their physical locations if their app worked, but alas, their app is crap. I cannot open/close accounts, I cannot reliably cash checks, I cannot easily transfer money -- the software might just be ornamental.

But it ain't 2010 anymore. We now have branchless banks like Ally, SoFi, and maybe even Robinhood. Online-only banking alternatives offer 3%+ APY in lieu of physical locations. According to science, paying region-locked human staffers to occupy an expensive retail space full of money costs a fortune.

Sometimes these banks are technically not banks -- they're "financial services companies with trusted banking partners".

I use Mercury for business banking. It's great. When I discovered that Mercury offers personal banking, I was cautiously optimistic. They built a successful B2B product, but companies usually botch expansions from B2B into B2C.

Oracle's graveyard of B2C products remains a trove of cautionary tales.

My wife and I opened a joint account in minutes. Mercury onboarded us individually and then instantly approved us. I transferred the money via their BofA Plaid integration -- no routing numbers needed, thank you sir. Smooth.

Bonus points: Mercury did not send me a trillion "PLEASE TAKE OUR SURVEY" emails.

I'm eager to test the following features after our money lands:

If you can survive without physical branches, consider parking your money in Mercury too.