Mercury receives conditional OCC approval to create a national bank

Fintech Mercury has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to create Mercury Bank.

Mercury, which applied for the national bank charter in December, said in a press release that it has entered the bank organization phase, where it will work to satisfy remaining requirements and obtain final OCC approval. The effort still needs approval from the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Mercury Technologies will separately file an application with the Fed to become a bank holding company. The bank will be based in Utah.

“We applied for this charter because the best founders in the country deserve a bank that was built for them,” Immad Akhund, Mercury’s co-founder and CEO, said in the release. “Our customers have been asking for Zelle, for expanded lending, for payment infrastructure we actually control. We couldn’t give them those things without a bank charter. Those gaps have always bothered me. This is how we start closing them.”

Jon Auxier will serve as the proposed bank’s president and CEO. He previously served as CFO of SoFi Bank.