The Best Small Business Bank Accounts (Updated for 2023)

Ensuring finances are properly managed is crucial to starting a business. A free business bank account can be an excellent tool for separating new business finances from personal bills. The trick is finding a provider that won’t charge an arm and a leg for their services. As a new business, every penny matters, and unnecessary costs add up super quickly. We’ll look at a few options for the best small business bank account and compare them.

Our Picks for Best Small Business Bank Accounts

Summary

This was an option that surprised me to an extent during my search. Chase is no stranger to offering incentives for opening accounts with them. Whether it’s a credit card, checking account, or even sometimes less-trafficked deposit accounts like CDs, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a product that doesn’t have some offer attached.

The Chase mobile app is pretty good and places all your accounts into one area. I have Chase products and have never had difficulty navigating the app to find what I need.

This account has all the typical bank stuff–extensive ATM network, mobile deposit, debit card, wires, ACH transfers, calling and talking to humans, etc.

Chase does have a monthly fee, but it is waived as long as $2,000 remains in the account regularly. Otherwise, the fee starts at $15/month. You can also avoid the monthly fee if your business has a Chase Ink Business card and spends at least $2,000 on that card each month.

Integrated Credit Card Processing

Chase Payment Solutions are great for businesses looking to keep their third-party services to a minimum or like the idea of tight integrations between where they do their banking and accepting credit and debit card payments from customers.

Chase provides its smaller credit card reader (to pair with an existing device like a tablet running the Chase mobile app) for $49. The larger standalone credit card terminal at $399 at the time of writing, sometimes with an additional $100 discount, is also available for in-person retail. In-person transactions will cost you 2.6% plus $0.10 for each event. For online transactions, Chase charges just 2.9% plus $0.25 for each transaction.

Chase doesn’t charge monthly fees or require long-term contracts for most small businesses.

Sign Up Bonuses

Chase also often has sign-up bonuses in effect for new accounts. It’s most often somewhere in the $300 range and requires depositing $2,000 into the account within 30 days of opening and keeping that money in the account for at least 60 days.

Suppose you need a full-service option, including credit card processing, and can manage to limit your cash deposits to $5,000 per month and determine your in-person banking to 20 transactions per month. In that case, Chase is one of the better options on the market.

I’m a fan of banks that offer mobile apps that function well, and NorthOne falls squarely onto that list. Over 100,000 customers use NorthOne, America’s fastest-growing business banking app. Their free business bank account makes transferring money, depositing checks, and paying with the NorthOne Mastercard super simple, but what I enjoy about this option is the dedicated tax account(s). If you collect sales or use tax, keeping your taxes aside and available for remittance is essential. Making that an automatic process takes this to the next level.

Regarding money management, NorthOne supports multiple users and integration with bookkeeping options to pass off accounting tasks to others on your team. Need to get an overview of your cash flow? The app presents good-looking graphs to make that happen.

On top of that, NorthOne ties into just about every platform you could ever need: Quickbooks, PayPal, Amazon, Venmo, Shopify, Etsy, Freshbooks, and a truckload of others.

NorthOne is no-fuss, easy banking for businesses. Even if you’re not opening a new business, you’ll find the feature set valuable and a surprising amount of room to grow.

What Does a Great Small Business Bank Account Look Like?

It’s effortless to find any bank to take your money. Within four miles of my home, there are at least 10 bank branches from five different banks and credit unions. There is no shortage of options near me.

However, that doesn’t mean they’re the best for starting a business. Many banks appreciate high deposit balances and don’t offer large transaction allowances. High-dollar e-commerce businesses might see daily deposits from their payment processor and withdrawals for payroll and expenses, but those are scheduled and routine.

Banks focusing on small businesses know that a smaller shop’s needs will differ. When every dollar counts, high deposit balances aren’t likely going to be a thing–at least from the start–and there’ll be a need for a debit card and frequent transactions as the only way to take care of regular expenses until lines of credit and invoice terms are established with suppliers.

A free or low-cost business checking account is critical for all these reasons. While you might not get as many hand-holding-type features and service offerings with some of these banking options, as a startup, you won’t likely need them, anyway.

How These Banks and Fintechs Were Chosen

Anyone can pick random banks off the Internet and slap them into a blog post. I wanted to stay away from such canned content and relive some of what I went through during my research of the bank I use for one of my businesses.

Here is what I wanted to use as criteria for evaluating the options I found:

Wrap Up

When I originally wrote this article, I had ten options. As I went through them, I realized some weren’t that great and not worthy of being offered up as the “best” options.

Some of these might not fit your needs, which is okay. Businesses growing and needing more backing and flexibility from a traditional institution might not find what they need on this list (though Chase is a powerhouse).

These options are solid and worth looking into for most of those operating an e-commerce business or are just starting. I’d be happy with any of them,, and I feel unconditionally comfortable suggesting these 5 options to my readers.

Regardless of your path, the biggest takeaway is to make sure you’re not spending money on a bank that you don’t have to spend. In the early stages, every dollar counts (I’ve said that how many times, now?). Watch out for unnecessary fees and transaction limits that could end up costing more down the road.

Simple might be a good thing. Start small and build. Like an e-commerce business, you might find the bank you choose has many of the same motivations.