Mercury expands into expense and billing workflows

Mercury is trying to turn a startup checking account into the control center for how a company spends money. Banking gets Mercury in the door, but cards, expense controls, bill pay, and paid workflow tools let it earn more from the same startup after the account is opened. That matters because Mercury still monetizes mainly from deposit yield, while rivals like Ramp and Brex are built to pull more revenue from day to day finance workflows.

• Mercury’s core business is still bank account led. In 2024 it reached $500M in annualized revenue on roughly $20B in deposits, with most revenue coming from interest sharing with partner banks, plus smaller contributions from interchange and $35 to $350 per month software fees. The expansion is an attach motion layered onto that deposit base.
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• The workflow products also change the competitive fight. Ramp lands with cards and expense management, then adds bill pay, procurement, travel, and treasury. Brex similarly uses spend software and business accounts to sit deeper in finance operations. Mercury expanding into expense and bill workflows is how it prevents the bank account from becoming a low engagement commodity.
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• This keeps Mercury aligned with startups rather than forcing an enterprise pivot. Its advantage remains fast onboarding, startup friendly UX, and a trusted operating account, but every added workflow increases switching costs because finance teams now approve spend, issue cards, pay vendors, and manage cash in one system instead of just parking deposits there.
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The direction of travel is toward a neo-SVB stack where the winning product is not just where startups store money, but where they move it, approve it, and reconcile it. Mercury’s path to larger revenue and stronger retention is to keep banking as the wedge, then steadily absorb more of the finance team’s daily work before Ramp or Brex becomes that operating system first.