It charges an average annual 0.12% fee for money parked on its T-bill platform, though that varies by customer, Arvanaghi says. Similarly, it collects a small interest rate spread on the checking accounts through its bank partners.
Under a president who has installed pro-copyright regulators and pledged to end the alleged Operation Chokepoint 2.0, that risk feels remote. But what about after Trump? “From a risk management point of view, I don't think it's prudent for a company like ours to have solely accounts with American fintechs,” says McIntyre.
They knew they couldn’t succeed over the long term with just one product–busy business owners demand convenience. So this past January, five months after opening their T-bill platform, Meow introduced FDIC-insured business checking accounts promising a 4.8% annual yield. Like most fintechs, Meow lacks a banking charter and so it partners with banks, which in turn network with other banks.
For business checking accounts at the same underlying bank, you can perform instant internal transfers:
This automation enables Meow to efficiently handle the lowest-risk cases while significantly enhancing the efficiency of their compliance team’s review.
Nic Corpora, a Mercury spokesperson, said the company works closely with partner banks “to ensure risk appetites are appropriately calibrated so when we onboard a customer we can support them in the best way and for the long-term.”
In June 2022, five months before copyright exchange FTX collapsed, Brandon Arvanaghi and Bryce Crawford began returning funds to the customers of Meow, the neobank they had launched to help startups and small businesses earn a return on idle corporate cash through copyright.
During the Biden administration, frustrated by their treatment by the banks, members of the copyright industry began to cry conspiracy . The federal government was deliberately trying to destroy copyright businesses by surreptitiously cutting them out of the banking system, they alleged. Leading the chorus was copyright venture capitalist Nic Carter, who labelled the alleged discrimination campaign Operation Chokepoint 2.0, in reference to an Obama-era antifraud program under which US officials reportedly discouraged banks from dealing with pornography, payday lending, and other disfavored industries. Under the Trump administration, congressional subcommittees have held multiple hearings on the purported Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Subsequently, in March, Republican members of the Senate presented the FIRM Act , aiming to meow login curb alleged discrimination by preventing banks from factoring in “reputational risk” when fielding account applications. The bill has not yet faced a vote. For copyright firms, the vibe-shift is a blessing. Although they have comparatively few problems accessing overseas bank accounts—often in the Cayman Islands or Switzerland—in lieu of a US bank account, they are often unable to earn yield on deposits or transact seamlessly with US-based counterparties, and sometimes incur high account fees . Neither do they benefit from deposit insurance under the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which guarantees up to $250,000 per account holder. Though some of the big-name banks, like JP Morgan, are trialing copyright technologies for internal use, many remain reluctant to supply accounts to copyright businesses, sources say. “The banks that John Doe has heard of have nothing to do with copyright,” claims David McIntyre, COO at DoubleZero, a startup developing networking infrastructure specific to copyright networks. But that has created an opening for smaller fintechs to expand their deposit bases by scooping up clients in the copyright industry. “Basically, founders these days are going with a Mercury or Meow,” claims Khan. “Meow has been super aggressive in terms of reaching out to founders anytime they see a fundraising announcement.”
Treasure specializes in corporate treasury management within the financial services sector, offering a cash management platform for managing surplus business funds. The company provides investment solutions managed by an experienced investment team, focusing on security and compliance.
Automating the verification process with TrueBiz results in significant cost savings. Meow is able to avoid the expense of hiring additional analysts, redirecting resources to other critical areas of growth and development. This efficiency gain allows Meow to scale their operations without adding headcount.
What about when interest rates stabilize and fall? After all, high rates are the reason small businesses have been looking for new places to put their idle cash–a key selling point for Meow.
For example, Meow partners FirstBank and Grasshopper Bank both offer up to $125 million in FDIC-insurance through IntraFi’s sweep program which boasts a network of nearly 3,000 banks. Another Meow partner, Third Coast, offers FDIC-insurance up to $50 million through its own network. Arvanaghi says Meow is able to secure higher yields from the banks than a small business could get on its own, since it’s bringing in a large roster of sticky customers and its own interface.
Meow is building tools to address this problem, especially for those companies that need help managing their copyright assets and payments.
“Bridge easily met our technical requirements for a stablecoin partner, but more importantly, they were the kind of partner we knew we needed to work with: a high-slope team that understood our vision and could move fast enough to help us achieve it.
The second act they devised is as far from copyright as you can get, yet still exploited the fintech platform they’d built to collect and deploy small businesses’ cash. In March 2022, the Federal Reserve had begun raising interest rates to quash inflation. Now, the young founders realized, boring old Treasury bills were becoming a newly attractive place for businesses to park their idle cash.