‘There were all these other great services, but banking was kind of static’: Mercury’s Immad Akhund on banking startups

As a founder of a startup in 2008, Immad Akhund found himself frustrated. Heyzap, a tool that maximized how much money app developers made from advertising, worked with a variety of banks, like Silicon Valley Bank and Bank of America. None of them was noteworthy. Akhund found banks’ technology woefully behind and they had a way of charging fees for everything.

“I was just really frustrated as an entrepreneur that I had all these great other services, which improved over time, but banking was this kind of static thing that I was forced to use and rely on,” he said. “I was never happy about it.”