Attention, founders: Mercury wants to move into your personal orbit.

The neobank designed for startups announced on Wednesday that it will open up its services for personal banking use for the first time. The company, which was named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2024 list in March, has made its name in recent years as a go-to neobank for small and growing businesses—a role that expanded after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank a year ago.

While Mercury has focused its efforts on serving businesses and startups, company leadership says it had long received requests to offer personal banking services—and it’s designed to oblige.

“We’ve been wanting to do this for a few years,” says Immad Akhund, Mercury’s cofounder and CEO, “but we’ve had a lot to do on the business side, and wanted to keep investing in that.” But personal banking was “by far the most requested feature from our customers,” he adds, so the company has been working behind the scenes to make it happen.

Akhund says that he brought on Alexey Likuev, Mercury’s head of personal banking, in early 2023 to start laying the groundwork for Mercury Personal, and that users have been testing it out since December. 

“The feedback has been tremendous,” Likuev says. “People love the simplicity.”

In terms of features, Mercury Personal will offer users high-yield savings accounts with 5% APY, customizable access to accounts (for family members or assistants), unlimited wire transfers, and up to $5 million in FDIC insurance. There is, however, an annual subscription fee of $240.

That fee, and features such as unlimited wire transfers, are in the mix because Mercury Personal is targeting a customer base that’s different from many of its competitors in the personal space. “Nobody has built what we’ve built,” says Likuev, which is “a product that works for a population of founders and investors.” So when it comes to the annual fee, “it’s definitely, for this demographic, a no-brainer,” he says. 

Akhund says the goal isn’t to grow Mercury Personal too quickly, as he and the company are focused on making it a sustainable, long-term service—which is one of the reasons that there’s a fee for signing up. “We want to grow it responsibly,” he says. Accordingly, he expects that the product will probably remain in wait-list mode until 2025.

Even so, he says customers should expect a high-end product, given the price point, and one that the company plans to grow and support well into the future.

“We’re used to giving people a premium experience,” Akhund says. “We just want to make sure we do it in a responsible way.”

This story has been updated to clarify that Mercury is a neobank, a fintech that provides banking services, and not a traditional bank.