Mercury Bank for a Non-Resident LLC: What It Is, What It Costs, and Which Countries It Does Not Accept

Short answer: Mercury is the account most non-resident LLCs we know actually run on, but it is not a bank: it is a platform that opens accounts at US partner banks, with FDIC coverage extended through a sweep network. The base plan is free, USD wires cost nothing, and it accepts foreign owners with no SSN and no trip. What it does not accept are certain countries of residence, certain industries and weak files, and it keeps reviewing accounts after they are open. This guide covers what it is, what it really costs and what goes wrong. The exact requirements and the step-by-step application are in Mercury vs Relay vs Wise for a non-resident LLC.

This is part of the US business banking guide for non-residents.

What Mercury is (and why it is not a bank)

Mercury was founded in San Francisco in 2017 and built for startups: a clean interface, an API, virtual cards, and an online onboarding policy that, unlike traditional banking, does not require a branch visit or an owner’s SSN. That made it, almost by accident, the front door to the US financial system for thousands of founders living elsewhere.

What Mercury does not have is a banking licence. Accounts are opened at licensed, federally supervised partner banks: today, Choice Financial Group and Column N.A. Mercury is the software, the app and the compliance team; the money is deposited at those banks. That detail matters for two reasons:

• Deposit insurance. Each partner bank carries the standard FDIC coverage of $250,000 per depositor. Mercury spreads balances across several banks through a sweep network, which lifts effective coverage well above that figure. It is documented on their site and worth reading before parking large balances.
• Who decides. Compliance (KYC, reviews, closures) is run by Mercury under its partner banks’ rules. When Mercury changes partner, or the partner changes its appetite, the rules change for you. In 2024, after the collapse of the banking-as-a-service intermediaries, Mercury announced the end of its relationship with Evolve Bank & Trust and migrated accounts to Choice and Column. Customers did not lose money, but it is proof that the custodian is not a footnote.

None of that makes Mercury less safe than a high-street bank for what an LLC uses it for: getting paid, paying, and holding operating balances. It is an argument for not keeping years of reserves in a single account, Mercury or otherwise.

What Mercury gives a non-resident LLC

• Checking and savings accounts in USD, with a US account and routing number. That is what lets you receive ACH from US clients and payouts from Stripe, Amazon, PayPal or any platform that insists on a US bank account.
• Domestic and international USD wires with no Mercury fee. Wires in other currencies carry conversion, around 1%.
• Physical and virtual debit cards (Visa), with per-card and per-employee limits, useful for separating subscriptions and ad spend.
• Treasury (Mercury Treasury) to hold balances in money market funds, above certain amounts.
• An API and automations, which for a digital business means reconciling without exporting CSVs by hand.
• No monthly fee and no minimum balance on the base plan. Plus and Pro exist, but they are built for teams with payroll and several locations.

What it does not give you: paper cheques (it can issue them electronically), cash deposits, branch service, or the kind of banking relationship that grows into credit over time. Building US credit is a different road, covered in building US credit as a non-resident.

The countries and businesses Mercury does not accept

This is where most applications die, and where most of the misinformation lives.

Comprehensively sanctioned countries. Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia and the occupied regions of Ukraine are off limits for any US fintech; that is OFAC, not Mercury policy. An owner living in one of those countries cannot open an account, wherever the LLC is formed.

Mercury’s own list. Beyond sanctions, Mercury keeps a list of founder residence countries it will not serve, based on its own risk assessment. That list expanded noticeably in 2024 and has kept changing since. It is published in its help centre and has to be checked on the day you apply, because they do not announce changes. We keep it crossed with Relay, Wise and Stripe, country by country and with a check date, in which countries Mercury, Relay, Wise and Stripe accept. A share of the “unexplained” rejections that reach our desk are simply a country that dropped off the accepted list between the LLC being formed and the account being requested.

Restricted industries. Crypto and digital assets (with narrow exceptions under review), adult content, gambling, cannabis, weapons, aggressive affiliate marketing, lending, and in general anything with a high chargeback profile. If your business sits near one of those lines, Mercury will see it on the website or in the description, and the application is declined however good the rest of the file is.

Files that do not add up. This is the biggest block and the most avoidable one. A website that does not say what you do, a business address that is the registered agent’s address, a generic or unsigned operating agreement, a name that does not match the EIN letter (CP 575) character for character. The exact checklist is in the banking comparison, and the document that causes the most rejections has its own guide: the operating agreement.

What happens after opening: reviews, freezes and closures

Opening the account is not the end of compliance; it is the start. Mercury monitors activity and compares what it sees with what you declared. These are the situations that trigger a review, in the order we see them:

1. A large, unexpected wire, especially from a new country or a client that does not appear in your history. Mercury holds it, asks for the invoice and contract, and releases when it understands. With documents to hand, that is days; without them, weeks.
2. A change in the owner’s country of residence. If you move to a country Mercury does not accept and update your address, the account can enter an orderly closure. If you do not update it, you are in breach of the terms. Check the list before you move.
3. Activity that does not match the description. You declared consulting and payments from an online store start arriving, or the reverse. Not illegal, but it forces Mercury to reassess the risk.
4. Expiring documents. An expired passport, LLC changes not reported, a periodic request for proof of address left unanswered.
5. Balances and flows inconsistent with the declared size, in particular fast in-and-out movements of the same amount, which look too much like what an anti-money-laundering system is built to catch.

When Mercury closes an account, it returns the funds by transfer to an account in the LLC’s name; it does not keep the money. But closure means losing the account number that Stripe, Amazon and your clients have on file, and that does hurt. That is why we recommend that any operating LLC keeps a second live account (Relay or Wise, depending on the case), not as a theoretical plan B but with a balance and at least one movement a month.

Real fees

Where a non-resident LLC does spend is on conversion into its home currency. If you earn in dollars and live in euros or pesos, sending the money out by wire in the destination currency pays Mercury’s conversion; sending it in dollars to a dollar account and converting with Wise is usually cheaper. That is why Mercury plus Wise is the most common setup among our clients: Mercury as the main account, Wise to move money out. The full comparison, Relay included, is in Mercury vs Relay vs Wise.

When Mercury is not your best option

• Your country of residence is not accepted. There is no workaround: not a relative’s address in another country, not a VPN. Declaring a false residence in a KYC application is fraud, and it surfaces late and badly. In that case Relay and Wise Business keep different lists, and sometimes the answer is a USD account at home plus Wise to get paid.
• You need cash or a branch. A business with a physical till, or clients who pay by paper cheque, needs a traditional bank, and that means travelling: covered in Chase and Bank of America as a non-resident.
• You want to build personal credit. Mercury does not build your personal credit file: its corporate credit card (IO) requires high balances and reports in the company’s name, not yours. If the goal is a US credit card in your own name, the route runs through a traditional bank and, usually, an ITIN.
• Your industry is on the restricted list. Do not keep trying: every rejection is recorded and makes the next attempt harder, including at other fintechs that share verification providers.

Before you apply: the three minutes that prevent a rejection

1. Open Mercury’s accepted-countries page and find yours. Today, not last week. For a one-glance view of your country across all four providers, use the country acceptance table.
2. Open your website and read it as a compliance analyst would: is it clear what you sell, to whom, and how to reach you?
3. Put the EIN letter (CP 575), the Articles of Organization and the signed operating agreement side by side, and confirm the LLC name is identical in all three, commas and the “LLC” suffix included.

If all three pass, the file is fit to submit. The final decision is always the bank’s, which is why we prepare every application as if the most sceptical person on the compliance team were going to read it: it is the only variable we control.

Start with the assessment

If you do not have the LLC yet, the account is not step one: it is step three, after deciding whether an LLC is the right structure for you and forming it with the paperwork a bank wants to see. The free assessment tells you in ten minutes whether an LLC fits and what banking file you should walk out with. If you already have one and the bank has said no, switch your LLC explains how we audit the file before trying again.