To clarify, when rawtxapp said "Wire transfers cost 20$ each", they probably mean wiring _to_ Mercury from their bank costs $20. Mercury doesn't charge for sending wires.

The reason they're mentioning the 3rd party bank fees is they'd prefer to use ACH pull to have Mercury take the money directly from their existing bank account (similar to how your gym or electric company might do). We do offer this, but only if you use a service called Plaid to link your third party bank account.

This involves typing your bank's username/password/2FA into a Plaid iframe on our website, which confirms it with the third party bank. If you've used Venmo, that's using Plaid under the hood to link your bank account.

Ok, all that said, my question for rawtxapp: are you mostly asking for us to verify 3rd party bank accounts via microdeposit instead? I agree it's less privacy invasive, but, definitely pretty slow and 1990s like you said about checks. I'm not sure of the security either.

I'm somewhat hoping it's less of an issue as more banks move to doing OAuth in Plaid, instead of sharing passwords. Capital One, Wells Fargo, and Chase do this now (we should really move to doing it too).