Connect Mercury

Mercury in your books. The token cannot send

Checking, savings and treasury arrive with their statements, and an approved payment lands in Mercury's approval queue.

Book a demo Start free

Orla requests, an admin in Mercury approves. US dollars only. Rolling out space by space.

What lands in the book

Every Mercury account, with its statement

Checking, savings and treasury, each under the name it has in Mercury.

Each account arrives with its available balance, named Mercury · Operating and so on; rename any of them and your name is kept. Balances refresh about once an hour.
The statement arrives by itself: about a month back when you connect, hourly after that, and only movements Mercury has sent, so something still pending is not counted as spent.
A transfer between two of your own Mercury accounts is one transfer, not an expense and an income.
A payment Orla requested is not booked twice: when the statement brings the bank's version of it, the payment you already have gains the bank's reference and date.
Receive on a connected account shows the account number, the routing number and the legal business name as Mercury states them, so there is nothing to retype.
Linked external accounts that Mercury shows are not imported: Orla can only request payments from money Mercury holds.

The token you give us

A token you make yourself, with no Send Money permission on it

Settings, then API tokens, in your own Mercury. The form lists the permissions one by one.

What to create: A token with read on accounts and transactions, read and write on recipients, Request Send Money, and nothing else.
What it cannot do: Send. Made as the form lists, the token carries no permission that moves money, so nothing Orla holds can pay by itself, and neither could somebody who stole it.
Checked before it is saved: Tried against Mercury first. Once accepted it is stored encrypted and never shown again, not to you and not to us.
If Mercury stops accepting it: The row says so, and Update token takes a fresh one while keeping the accounts, their history and the ceiling.
The ceiling: A ceiling per payment is set when you connect, and a payment above it is not even requested.
A sandbox: Connects Mercury's test environment instead of real money.
Who can connect it: Someone with the right to manage accounts and connections, on a confirmed email address.

Who presses last

Orla requests a payment. An admin in Mercury sends it

Approve in Orla as usual, and nothing has moved yet.

What Orla does: Within a few minutes of the approval it requests the payment in your Mercury, one request per payment, and the payment says it is waiting there.
Who presses last: An admin on your team, in Mercury's own approval queue, approves or rejects the request.
When the expense is booked: Only when Mercury reports the payment as sent. A request rejected or failed in Mercury is refused in Orla, and nothing is booked for it.
The payee: Must already be a recipient in your Mercury. When it is not, Add payee to Mercury first shows exactly what will be written into your account and adds it only after you confirm. The payee is found by account number and routing number together, and two recipients that could be the one meant stop the payment instead of one being picked.
How it is paid: US payees by ACH, everyone else by international wire, SWIFT or IBAN. A UK sort code cannot be paid from Mercury, and a payment in any currency but US dollars is not requested.
Once, never twice: Orla requests a payment once and never again on its own. A request untouched for two weeks, or gone from Mercury, asks you to check there what was really paid.
A payment Mercury reverses: Caught within the hour, flagged, announced to the owner and the admins, and netted by a compensating entry.
Disconnecting: Not while requests from Orla wait for approval inside Mercury: approve or reject them there first. What is already booked stays.

Questions

The questions a finance lead asks before connecting the bank

Can Orla send money from our Mercury account?

No. Orla requests a payment, and the request lands in your Mercury approval queue, where an admin on your team approves or rejects it. The token you make for Orla carries no Send Money permission, so nothing Orla holds can pay by itself. A payment above the ceiling you set on connect is not even requested.

Does Mercury accounting in Orla mean retyping the statement?

No. Checking, savings and treasury arrive as accounts of their own, with about a month of history on connect and an hourly refresh after that. A transfer between your own Mercury accounts is one transfer, and a payment Orla requested is not booked twice: it gains the bank's reference and date.

Can we pay contractors outside the US from Mercury?

Yes, in US dollars. US payees are paid by ACH and everyone else by international wire, SWIFT or IBAN. A UK sort code cannot be paid from Mercury, and the payment says so. The payee has to be a recipient in your Mercury already, and Orla adds one only after showing you what it will write.

Pay from another bank

Connect Mercury, and keep the last press in Mercury

Your own account, reached with a key you made yourself; the money never passes through Orla. This rail is being switched on space by space.

Airwallex →: Each currency as its own account, and a draft batch that a person submits and approves inside Airwallex.
Slash →: No drafts there, so a transfer is created only when your colleague presses Send via Slash after the approvals.
Safe →: Read from the chain with its owners and threshold; Orla proposes as a delegate, never signs and never executes.

See it on your own books

Thirty minutes: we connect an account, drop a real bill in, and close a month together.

Book a demo or start free and connect one account