Founders from Nigeria can no longer open a US bank account based on new restrictions from Mercury Bank.
Mercury Bank, a San Francisco-based digital bank for startups has announced that it will stop supporting accounts from certain regions. The bank will no longer serve startups whose founders have passports of the below listed African countries.
- Nigeria
- Cameroon
- Burundi
- Central African Republic
- Republic of Congo
- The Congo
- Liberia
- Libya
- Mali
- Mozambique
- Somalia
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Zimbabwe
Other countries included in the list are:
Afghanistan, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Burundi, Cambodia, Croatia, Eritrea, Haiti, Iraq, Liberia, Lebanon, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, and Yemen.
Nigeria founders were given a one month eviction notice to move all their company funds. All account accounts will be restricted, incoming transactions to their account will be blocked, and they’ll only be able to access their account to finish disbursing funds, which they’ll need to do before August 22, 2024.
While, founders from countries like Ukraine were given 2 weeks eviction notice.
In a later post made by the CEO Mr Immad Akhund, he stated that the countries that can no longer bank with Mercury, including Nigeria, make up sub 1% of their deposits but 50%+ of the compliance & risk work for the company.
