#banking
Navigate business banking, accounts, and financial services effectively
Stripe Atlas founders can open a Rho business account before the IRS issues their EIN — route startup costs through it to keep Section 195 deductions clean.
Revolut Business Scale costs $180/month ($1,680/year) in 2026, not the $119 roundups quote — plus price history and Grow-vs-Scale break-even math.
A bounced check reverses the deposit and reopens the receivable — book the NSF fee as its own expense and apply the redeposit to the invoice, never to revenue.
Because you authorized the wire, US banks rarely refund APP fraud — $8.3B lost in 2024. Out-of-band vendor verification and dual approval stop it.
Rippling's Business Banking pairs same-day payroll with 2.25% APY checking — judge the custody, lock-in, and fine print before switching.
On September 18, 2026, Nacha makes standard ACH credits available by 9 a.m. with no receipt cutoff and rewrites the IAT definition in Section 8.55. What changes for cross-border payments, payroll timing, and the 2027–2028 follow-ons.
A 4.08% muni yield equals a 6.00% taxable yield in the 32% bracket. How to run the tax-equivalent yield math on business reserve cash, and where munis beat FDIC-insured savings.
Since September 30, 2025, the Treasury has stopped issuing paper refund and vendor checks under Executive Order 14247. Here is how business refunds, IRS payments, and federal contract remittances work now.
Mercury Command, launched June 16, 2026, lets founders run business banking in plain English — checking cash, changing transfer rules, categorizing transactions, and sending invoices — with every action staged for explicit human approval. This guide explains what it does, the agent-card spend controls that followed, and the adoption checklist small businesses need before granting AI payment access.
Under UCC 4-404 a bank may refuse a check presented more than six months after its date — but it may also pay it in good faith and charge your account. A "void after 90 days" legend binds the payee, not the bank. Here is how to age outstanding checks, place a six-month stop-payment order (14 days if oral), reissue safely, and report uncashed checks as unclaimed property.
Federal law lets an employer require direct deposit but never lets it pick the employee's bank. Most states additionally require voluntary written consent, and Florida and Montana prohibit mandates outright. A three-bucket state breakdown, the five paycard conditions, the authorization-form fields to capture, and the rollout sequence that keeps an electronic-pay switch out of wage-claim territory.
Regulation CC makes the first $275 of a check deposit available the next business day and most ordinary checks by the second, but six documented exceptions — including deposits above $6,725 — let a bank hold the balance until the seventh business day. Here are the schedules, the written-notice rights, and how to plan payroll around them.
