Mercury owning startups' operating accounts
Mercury at $500M annualized revenue
Mercury is trying to own the operating account for startups in the same way SVB once owned the primary banking relationship, then layer the rest of the workflow on top. The key difference is that Mercury starts with a clean web product, fast onboarding, sweep based cash protection, and treasury tools built for founders and funds, while leaving the regulated bank balance sheet and lending risk to partners like Choice and Column.
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Mercury was built to serve companies SVB often undersold, especially earlier stage startups, remote founders, and smaller funds. The product fit is concrete, one login for checking, wires, FDIC sweep coverage up to $3M, and treasury allocation into short term government funds, plus workflows that match how startups and VCs actually move money.
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The revenue model explains the positioning. Mercury makes most of its money from revenue share on deposits, with smaller contributions from cards, wires, FX, venture debt, and SaaS. That pushes it to deepen the bank account relationship, while Ramp and Brex are more naturally pulled toward spend management, bill pay, procurement, and enterprise software attach.
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This also makes infrastructure choice strategic. Mercury migrated off Evolve and now works with Choice and Column, showing that the product promise is not just better UI, it is tighter control over account opening, ledger movement, and bank partner reliability. Deposit retention through that migration suggests the account has become sticky operating infrastructure, not a lightweight fintech wrapper.
The next step is a rebundled startup bank stack with Mercury at the center of cash, treasury, and founder workflows. If it keeps compounding trust and adding more venture specific software around the account, it can become the default financial home screen for startups and funds, while Ramp and Brex keep pulling harder toward the broader finance operating system market.