Mercury (Fintech) $500 Business Checking Bonus

Offer at a glance

  • Maximum bonus amount: $500
  • Availability: Nationwide
  • Direct deposit required: No
  • Additional requirements: No
  • Hard/soft pull: Unknown
  • ChexSystems: Unknown
  • Credit card funding: Unknown
  • Monthly fees: None
  • Early account termination fee: Unknown
  • Household limit: None listed
  • Expiration date: None listed

The Offer

Direct link to offer

  • Mercury is a ‘banking stack for startups and small businesses’ and is offering a bonus of $500 when you deposit $5,000 within the first 90 days

The Fine Print

  • All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them

Avoiding Fees

Monthly Fees

This account has no monthly fees to worry about

Early Account Termination Fee

I’m unsure if there is any early account termination fee or not

Our Verdict

Previously offered a $500 bonus but that required spending $10,000. I’d recommend reading that thread for more information on the referral process.

Useful posts regarding bank bonuses:

View Comments (44)

  • Both p2 and I approved. Applied in morning. LLC entities.
    Uploaded EIN and Cert of Org issued from state. Also, uploaded current bank statements for those LLCs

    • My experience similar. LLC, uploaded state certificate and IRS EIN letter, answered their stupid "business plan" questions, gave them my state professional license number, linked existing bank account to fund. Got approved within 2 hr, no additional questions. Now we'll see if they come through w/ bonus.

  • Current account holders excluded from this offer? I don't see any terms stating that..

  • after two rounds of 'prove to us you actually do business' I was approved with my LLC, only took about ~2 hours

    • What did they want? I can see the need for business licenses or registration documents — but if they wanted tax returns or detailed P&L, that would seem way too intrusive for a bank account.

  • I posted this offer yesterday. It was sent to me by someone at that S&P company shown on the offer page, and I believe they earn a commission for every new account. You just need to deposit $5K, there's no hold period. I was told that the system will automatically pay out for any account that hits the $5K threshold within 90 days. They also said that Sole props may be accepted but it would have to be a very well established business.

    • @guest_2027956 Thank you for this summary. Can you please clarify -- or perhaps ask your source -- how a sole prop is supposed to apply when the application dropdown menu does not give you a choice of sole prop as your business structure? I have a sole prop that has been in business for 20 years, and is fully licensed, so I would think I would qualify -- but I don't know how to apply without misstating my business structure on the application.

      • This is what Mercury said about applying as Sole prop: "If they're seeing the option "LLC taxed as a Sole Proprietorship" that's what they should choose!"

  • After like 3 updates and a lot of info I got this:
    “Thank you for taking the time to follow-up with additional details about your business. Unfortunately, upon re-review, we were still unable to verify your company with the information provided. As a result, we cannot open a Mercury account for you at this time.”

    Don’t waste your time unless your business is registered.

  • I've been using them as my main bank since the first promotion they ran. I love them. In a sea of horrible fintechs, they're an actual good one.

  • I bank with them. You need articles of organization and LLC docs for them to open the account. The support is only via email and takes them 24-48 hours to respond. It’s good product but i needed to open a secondary account with a local bank just in case…

    • What's very weird is that, at some point the last couple of years, they revised their FAQs to delete the statement that they don't take sole props:

      Here's the version from August 2022: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/mercury-banking-for-startups-spend-10000-on-debit-card-get-500-bonus/#comment-1419897

      "“What companies will you accept as customers?

      We can accept most U.S. companies that aren’t money services businesses or involved with adult entertainment, marijuana or internet gambling. Our product is geared towards tech companies, so it might not be the best fit for some other businesses, especially ones that frequently deal with physical cash. 𝐖𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐧❜𝐭 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐬.”

      Here's the current version: https://mercury.com/faq

      "What companies will you accept as customers?

      We can accept most U.S. companies that aren’t money services businesses or involved with adult entertainment, cannabis or internet gambling. Our product is geared towards tech companies, so it might not be the best fit for some other businesses, especially ones that frequently deal with physical cash. We cannot open accounts for trusts."

      Why revise the FAQs to suggest that they now accept SPs, and then not have that option in the application? Strange.

    • Yea, application has no option for sole proprietors in the company type selection.
      Looks like a pass for me.