Mercury builds a full financial operating system for startups and small businesses — checking and savings accounts, corporate cards, spend management, treasury, bill pay, venture debt, and now personal banking, all on one platform. It is not itself a bank; it layers software on top of FDIC-insured partner banks (currently Column N.A. and Choice Financial Group), though it has received conditional OCC approval to charter its own national bank. Customers get a design-forward dashboard that replaces the clunky interfaces of legacy banks and bundles tools that most businesses would otherwise cobble together across multiple vendors. Mercury earns revenue from interest income on ~$20B in deposits, interchange on corporate cards, and software subscriptions ($35–$350/month). Its core market is tech founders, but it has expanded aggressively into e-commerce, AI-native companies, and non-tech SMBs — 73% of new 2025 customers came from outside the tech startup category.