Mercury – Banking built for startups • Hacker News Board

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#31

Post by immad » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #30

immad wrote: post #5

I am co-founder, CEO of Mercury. Excited to see this on HN. Happy to answer any questions. We set out wanting to: a) deliver an amazing online banking experience for startups b) help entrepreneurs understand their revenues/costs better and succeed c) deliver great financial services. We have a long way to go but are excited to unveil what we have achieved so far. Mercury will provide your startup a FDIC-insured check…

US-only, do I understand correctly? EU companies need not apply?

Reposting from another comment:

The company has to be incorporated in the US. But the founder can be foreign.

Unfortunately banking is a very geo by geo thing in terms of regulation, payment rails, banking partnerships etc. We don't have any immediate plans to launch outside the US, though I would love to be global from day 1 if we could.

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#32

Post by manigandham » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

Congrats on the launch. We're with SVB but tired of their crappy ancient tech stack and want a bank with a decent API.

Mobile apps with check deposits and xero/intuit integration would be high priority features before a move.

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#33

Post by immad » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

markh wrote: post #26

immad wrote: post #5

I am co-founder, CEO of Mercury. Excited to see this on HN. Happy to answer any questions. We set out wanting to: a) deliver an amazing online banking experience for startups b) help entrepreneurs understand their revenues/costs better and succeed c) deliver great financial services. We have a long way to go but are excited to unveil what we have achieved so far. Mercury will provide your startup a FDIC-insured check…

Immad, congratulations on the launch! 1) Do you support international wire transfers? If so, any advantages in terms of fees and exchange rates over a traditional bank such as Wells Fargo? 2) Do you require hardware keys or does 2 factor auth suffice?

1) $35/int-wire. We aren't currently competing on fees/exchange here. But the UI is great and we should have APIs for international wires soon.

2) We support Authy, Authenticator and other apps that support TOTP.

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#34

Post by MaxGabriel » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

craigsmansion wrote: post #28

MaxGabriel wrote: post #12

I'm a co-founder and CTO at Mercury. We have some amazing frontend UI (the onboarding flow especially) if you'd like to check it out, and our backend is 100% Haskell. AMA

How did you sell Haskell? Once Haskell was decided on, how did you approach development?

We were a team of 3, with the CEO and myself technical, so ultimately it came down to just co-founder trust. Immad was somewhat skeptical, but after interviewing some amazing candidates who wanted to work for us to use Haskell, he's really liked it.

Development was pretty simple, I just created a yesod-postgres template and we got started with authentication. Are you asking about something specific?

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#35

Post by MaxGabriel » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

AdamM12 wrote: post #24

MaxGabriel wrote: post #12

I'm a co-founder and CTO at Mercury. We have some amazing frontend UI (the onboarding flow especially) if you'd like to check it out, and our backend is 100% Haskell. AMA

Really like Haskell after taking an upper level programming language class. Interesting choice as I haven't seen/heard of many using it as a backend.

Yes it's definitely a more obscure choice. But a cult classic! It's worked out really well for us; the promise of "if it compiles it works" (mostly) holds out

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#36

Post by unixhero » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

immad wrote: post #5

I am co-founder, CEO of Mercury. Excited to see this on HN. Happy to answer any questions. We set out wanting to: a) deliver an amazing online banking experience for startups b) help entrepreneurs understand their revenues/costs better and succeed c) deliver great financial services. We have a long way to go but are excited to unveil what we have achieved so far. Mercury will provide your startup a FDIC-insured check…

US only?

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#37

Post by yingw787 » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

immad wrote: post #5

I am co-founder, CEO of Mercury. Excited to see this on HN. Happy to answer any questions. We set out wanting to: a) deliver an amazing online banking experience for startups b) help entrepreneurs understand their revenues/costs better and succeed c) deliver great financial services. We have a long way to go but are excited to unveil what we have achieved so far. Mercury will provide your startup a FDIC-insured check…

Congratulations on the launch!

- Are the analytics pipeable via API/sockets, or are they planned to be behind the GUI? Are you curating a plugins ecosystem with Stripe/Gusto/etc. or can anybody use the API as long as you have keys/secrets?

- How do you plan on handling customer support? I use Schwab /AmEx and I love it b/c you can get a representative on the line in less than two rings. I am always concerned of something happening that can't be easily handled with automated systems with high customer satisfaction (e.g. fraud resolution).

- I like the little things, like the tea you get if you put $250k in checkings. What kind of tea is it and how much do you get? I drink this Pomegranate Mojito high-caffeine tea from Zest Teas at the office and I love it.

Best of luck!

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#38

Post by typo_hunter » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

MaxGabriel wrote: post #12

I'm a co-founder and CTO at Mercury. We have some amazing frontend UI (the onboarding flow especially) if you'd like to check it out, and our backend is 100% Haskell. AMA

Beautiful UI, really well-done! What was the toughest decision made in the process of crafting the UX?

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#39

Post by MaxGabriel » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

markh wrote: post #26

immad wrote: post #5

I am co-founder, CEO of Mercury. Excited to see this on HN. Happy to answer any questions. We set out wanting to: a) deliver an amazing online banking experience for startups b) help entrepreneurs understand their revenues/costs better and succeed c) deliver great financial services. We have a long way to go but are excited to unveil what we have achieved so far. Mercury will provide your startup a FDIC-insured check…

Immad, congratulations on the launch! 1) Do you support international wire transfers? If so, any advantages in terms of fees and exchange rates over a traditional bank such as Wells Fargo? 2) Do you require hardware keys or does 2 factor auth suffice?

CTO here. I do hope to support hardware keys like Yubikey in the near future though!

Re: Mercury – Banking built for startups

#40

Post by ulzeraj » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

Sadly it seems to be an US only or US centric type of service and I understand that it is as it should be since baking accounts and borders are complicated matter.

Here in Brazil here have Nubank which offers lots of modern features like APIs and so but they do not offer services for business so we have to rely on old crusty bureaucratic evil banks.