Mercury CEO says its own bank will open in 2027 after OCC, FDIC nods

Mercury, the business banking app that today runs on partner banks, expects its own bank to be live in 2027, co-founder and chief executive Immad Akhund said on the This Week in Fintech podcast: “sometime next year we should be live”.This Week in Fintech podcast, Inside Mercury’s Next Act With CEO Immad Akhund. He said Mercury is conditionally approved by the OCC and the FDIC and is in a build phase, working on its Federal Reserve connection and banking core. The interview was recorded on 30 October and published on 10 November.

What the record shows

Both approvals he described are on file. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval for Mercury Bank, National Association, of Salt Lake City, in a decision dated 24 April 2026.OCC Corporate Decision #1372: Mercury Bank, NA preliminary conditional approval. It will be a fully online bank with no branches, owned by Mercury Technologies, and it may open only after it meets every preopening requirement.

The FDIC approved the bank’s application for deposit insurance in an order dated 8 September 2026.FDIC order approving deposit insurance for Mercury Bank, National Association (8 September 2026). Both regulators require initial paid-in capital of at least $300 million.

The approvals also explain the timing. The OCC approval expires if the capital is not raised within 12 months, or if the bank is not open for business within 18 months of 24 April 2026. The FDIC’s consent expires one year from its order unless insurance has taken effect or the agency grants an extension. One approval is still to come: after the OCC and FDIC decisions, Mercury Technologies applies to the Federal Reserve to become the bank’s holding company.

Mercury first announced its applications on 19 December 2025.Mercury applies for OCC national bank charter to become the bank for builders. It announced the OCC decision on 27 April and said it would keep using its existing partner banks until Mercury Bank opens.Mercury Receives OCC Conditional Approval to Establish Mercury Bank, N.A.. Its website still says Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank, with banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A.Mercury: Disclosures. Revolut’s US bank holds the same kind of OCC approval, and its chief executive also expects a launch next year, we reported on Wednesday.The S-Curve, Revolut’s Storonsky targets 2028 IPO, US bank launch next year, 11 November 2026.

Why Mercury wants a charter

Akhund’s reasons are practical. Mercury cannot offer Zelle, he said, which he finds annoying as a customer himself. Mercury does a little lending, but broad lending is hard without being a bank and lending against deposits, he said. Partner banks serve many fintechs and must hold a common policy across all of them; at Mercury’s size, he said, a neobank eventually has to go direct. Mercury’s April announcement listed the same gaps and promised Zelle built into Mercury Bank accounts. “Our customers have been asking for Zelle, for expanded lending, for payment infrastructure we actually control,” Akhund said then.

He also described a risk Mercury carries today: “checks can be reversed for 60 days which I think is like kind of crazy,” he said, which is why customers Mercury understands less well wait longer to use deposited checks.

The business he is moving

The host said Mercury now has more than 450,000 customers and more than $1 billion in revenue. In April, Mercury put those figures at more than 300,000 customers and more than $650 million in annualized revenue. Akhund said only about 30% of customers are startups. He said Mercury launched its corporate card in 2022 and that “more than 75% of our customers” use it over any other corporate card.

Agents are still early in payments: at Web Summit on Tuesday, Yuno’s chief executive said his own agent pays with a raw card number, as we reported.The S-Curve, Yuno’s CEO says his AI agent still pays with a raw card number, 10 November 2026. He was blunt about the incumbents. Big banks are wary of AI agents, he said, because they “just don’t know how to build software”. Mercury instead built an MCP server that lets agents prepare payments, but “a human’s in the loop and you have to kind of click approve,” he said, and it is adding controls that show every agent connected to an account and every action it takes.