Disclosure: I am the current head of growth at Mercury
- Mercury is online first and built for online companies... that means you never have to go in person to sign documents, we have APIs/integrations that connect to the tools you likely use for your business, etc.
- Many of the bigger banks charge fees or have otherwise poor experiences (wires, maintenance, minimum balances)that Mercury is better at: free accounts, no minimum balance, free wires, and just a general attitude of no-fees-wherever-possible
- The design and craft of the product experience around Mercury is super high - little details like transactions filters, easily being able to copy any account/routing number or auto-filling addresses, etc, make a huge difference when you compare side by side.
- Lots of other reasons, but I'll wrap with we're just getting started =)
what you should really do, is solve the lending problem. as a startup founder it has been impossible to get a corporate credit card without personal guarantees, even if I asked for a low dollar limit (e.g. 10K). in europe, that was never a problem for me. not giving a personal guarantee has nothing to do with being a scammer or shady person, but preventing the piercing of the limited liability aspect of the company you are founding. also, do not ask founders to deposit collateral to solve this problem. that's just lame and uncreative. VC funding or proven revenue should also not be demanded.
all of that loses to freezing an account and making your customer lose business, right? I can imagine having a bank account frozen, how much money and customers you can lose because of this.
The Creators arms race is in full swing, and the winner will be who can deliver the way to most monetize your existing audience AND expand your audience. Twitter already has a strong interest graph and is well positioned here
(Disclaimer: I work for Mercury!)