Contaro vs Mercury

Contaro

Accounting software for self-employed people and small businesses in Austria

Contaro is accounting software for self-employed people, sole proprietors and small businesses in Austria, covering invoicing, receipts, expenses and tax preparation in one German-language tool. It is built for the Kleinunternehmer and Selbständige who need their books to be correct but have no intention of making accounting their job. Invoices are created from customisable templates with your own logo and colours, and carry the österreichische Pflichtangaben — the mandatory fields an Austrian invoice must show — along with proper USt handling, so compliance is the default rather than something you check afterwards. Recurring invoices can be issued weekly, monthly or quarterly, and overdue items feed a dunning workflow instead of being tracked in a spreadsheet. The receipt side leans on AI: photograph or upload a receipt and Contaro extracts the supplier, date and amount and proposes an expense category, which you confirm before it saves. A built-in assistant called Taro answers questions against your own data and drafts invoices, reminders and credit notes. A Gmail integration finds and files invoices that arrived by email. At year end it produces the E/A-Bericht and a complete tax package for your Steuerberater, exports to PDF and CSV, and supports XRechnung XML for recipients who require it. Pricing starts with a 14-day Pro trial that drops automatically to a free tier of five invoices a month, so there is no cancellation to remember. Data handling is DSGVO-compliant.

Mercury

Banking built for startups

Mercury is business banking built for startups: checking and savings accounts, corporate cards, wires and ACH, bill pay, invoicing, and treasury, all in one dashboard designed to be opened by a founder rather than by a finance department. The problem it solves is that traditional business banking assumes a business that already exists. Opening an account means a branch visit, a minimum balance, and a fee schedule written for a company that has a controller. Mercury lets a newly incorporated startup open an account online in minutes, issue virtual and physical cards to the team with per-card limits, and send free domestic wires and ACH - the operations a two-person company actually performs in its first year. Mercury is a financial technology company rather than a bank itself. Deposits are held through partner banks, and a sweep network spreads balances across multiple institutions to extend FDIC coverage far beyond the standard per-account limit. That structure became a selling point after the March 2023 regional-banking crisis, when a lot of startups discovered their entire runway sat in one institution. In 2026 Mercury received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to become a federally regulated bank in its own right, which would fold that partner layer into the company. Beyond the account, Mercury has grown into a finance stack: Mercury Treasury for idle runway, bill pay and invoicing with approval rules, expense management, and Mercury Raise, a network connecting founders to investors and to each other. The expansion is deliberate - the account is the wedge, and the surrounding workflow is what makes it hard to leave. Traction is unusually well documented for a private fintech. Mercury reports more than 300,000 customers, roughly one in three US startups, around $650 million in annualised revenue, and four consecutive profitable years. It raised a $300 million Series C led by Sequoia in March 2025 at a $3.5 billion valuation, then a further $200 million in May 2026 at $5.2 billion, led by TCV. How it compares: Brex and Ramp overlap heavily but lead with the corporate card and spend management, with banking attached; Mercury leads with the bank account and adds spend management around it. Relay and Novo aim at small businesses and freelancers rather than venture-backed startups. A traditional business bank still wins if you handle cash, need in-person service, or want lending secured against physical assets. It fits incorporated startups, remote teams, and agencies that operate entirely online. It is the wrong choice for a cash-handling business or anyone who needs a branch.