# Mercury Personal Banking: First Impressions

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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_costs).

[^note]: Am I really a "customer" when they charge -0.01% interest to hold my
    money?

![There was a problem processing your request.](/mercury-000.png)

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](https://www.ally.com), [SoFi](https://www.sofi.com/banking/), and maybe
even [Robinhood](https://robinhood.com/us/en/banking/). 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.

[^note]: Sometimes these banks are technically not banks -- they're "financial
    services companies with trusted banking partners".

I use [Mercury](https://mercury.com) for business banking. It's great. When I
discovered that
[Mercury offers personal banking](https://mercury.com/personal-banking), I was
cautiously optimistic. They built a successful B2B product, but companies
usually botch expansions from B2B into B2C.

[^note]: 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.

[^note]: **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:

- enforce spending limits on debit cards
- automate stuff via the
  [Mercury API](https://docs.mercury.com/reference/getaccount)
- schedule monthly rent payments to our landlord
- match receipts via email (for which I plan to automate forwarding from my
  FastMail account)
- filter transactions by merchant, user, etc.
- connect to the
  [official Mercury MCP server](https://docs.mercury.com/docs/what-is-mercury-mcp)

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

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