The news: Mercury has filed with the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) for a national bank charter and applied to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for deposit insurance.

By obtaining a bank charter, Mercury will de-risk by eliminating the need for partner banks and putting banking services entirely under its control. It may also expand its in-house technology stack, including building its own banking core or payment processing infrastructure.

Mercury reportedly managed $20 billion in customer deposits as of mid-2025; with a charter, that would make it a top-100 US bank.

Zoom out: This spring, Mercury terminated its relationship with bank partner Evolve Bank & Trust, after the implosion of Evolve’s banking as a service platform Synapse and a regulatory review brought to light severe shortcomings in Evolve’s controls. Mercury plans to diversify its bank partnerships by migrating customers whose deposits were at Evolve to other bank partners.

The diversification of partner banks is part of a broader trend of fintechs acquiring bank partners to tighten control over their operations and improve their ability to scale quickly and compliantly. PayPal applied for an industrial loan company charter just last week, while Nubank applied for an OCC charter in October and Revolut has expressed interest. Crypto-native companies have also applied for traditional bank charters and national trust charters to support their growth.

Our take: Fintechs that just looked like banks are actually becoming banks. Partnerships between fintechs that are bank lookalikes and sponsor banks are giving way to the next wave of licensed financial institutions (FIs) and a new definition of “traditional banking.”

Since its founding in 2017, Mercury has cultivated an image as a digital business bank, growing from deposits for startups to a broader range of products, services, and customers. As a bank, it will be able to issue its own cards and lines of credit and hold them on its balance sheet, increasing its reach into business banking while expanding margins.