Mercury builds banking for VC funds
Immad Akhund, CEO of Mercury, on the business models of fintechs vs. banks
Investors matter to Mercury because VC funds look like ideal deposit customers, large balances, frequent wires, and highly patterned money movement that legacy banks often treat as suspicious. A venture fund may receive a multi million dollar capital call from LPs, then quickly wire that same money into startup investments. Mercury built onboarding, payments, and support around that workflow, while also surrounding founders with investor discovery tools that pull both sides of the startup capital network onto the platform.
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The investor segment is small by customer count, about 5% in the 2023 interview, but likely much larger in dollars because funds hold concentrated cash and move it in bursts. That fits Mercury’s deposit led model, where revenue is driven mainly by sharing interest income on customer balances with partner banks.
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Mercury did not just wait for funds to sign up. It built Investor DB and Mercury Raise to connect founders with seed investors, making banking the center of a broader startup workflow. That gives Mercury a distribution loop where founders bank with Mercury, meet investors through Mercury, and those investors may also keep fund accounts on Mercury.
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This is also where Mercury differs from Brex and Ramp. Mercury starts with cash custody and bank operations, then layers cards and finance software on top. Brex and Ramp are stronger in card driven spend management. VC funds, with fewer employees and more wire activity than card spend, naturally lean toward Mercury’s core product shape.
The next step is deeper specialization for funds, not just a generic business account. Mercury is already packaging VC specific banking on its site, and over time that can expand into fund operations, treasury, capital call workflows, and tighter links between founders and investors. If that happens, investors become more than a niche segment, they become infrastructure for Mercury’s startup ecosystem strategy.