High yield business checking: Bank Index scores the interest line, and the best rates sit outside the checking account

Is there a high yield business checking account that pays a real rate on the whole balance, with no hoops to jump through? I hear it from finance leads once a round lands. Polished adverts make the answer harder to find than it should be.

Bank Index, a register-based directory that BankStore runs, scores every account provider on a line called Best interest on business balances. Each mark on a reviewed card comes with a sentence of explanation and a source link, so the conditions behind a rate sit right next to it.

I worked through that single line this week, across the providers a startup is likely to meet, and copied every condition attached to a rate into one sheet before comparing anything. The pattern is clear enough to state at the top. The highest numbers belong to treasury and yield products bolted onto an account, and the plain checking accounts of the largest banks pay close to nothing.

What does Bank Index measure on the interest line?

The line asks how much a business can earn on money it is not spending, and on what conditions, and before any rate is read a rule in the method removes a whole class of offers from the contest.

It reads: "Business use only: a savings rate or an app available only to individuals scores 1 on the related business need, however well it serves personal customers." I like that rule a lot. A consumer savings rate on the same bank’s website tells a founder little about the business account, and the index refuses to let it leak into the score.

Across the whole directory, the averages split sharply by type. Banks average 5.2 on this need. Payment and e-money firms average 2.0, and there is a legal reason for the gap.

Many e-money cards carry the same sentence, saying the firm "takes no deposits and makes no loans." A firm that cannot take deposits cannot pay deposit interest, however good its app is.

High yield business checking at the largest banks

Plain checking at the big three pays little, and the cards record it without softening. Bank of America scores 3.0 here. The card quotes the savings product: "Business Advantage Savings pays a standard 0.01 percent APY and at most 0.04 percent with Platinum Honors status."

At that rate, a startup holding two million dollars earns about two hundred dollars a year. The same balance at three per cent would earn sixty thousand dollars.

Chase scores 4.0 because a number is missing, not because it is low. Its business savings pays interest, the card says, "but no rate is published on the product page." Wells Fargo lands half a point lower: "Navigate Business Checking is interest-bearing, but the product page publishes no rate, and Initiate pays none."

These marks aren’t a verdict on the banks as institutions. They score what a founder can see before signing. A rate nobody can see can’t be compared with anything, and the scoring treats it that way.

Business bank account with interest at the digital providers

The digital business accounts sit several points higher on the same line. A business bank account with interest is their main pitch, and the cards check the conditions behind the headline rate.

Bluevine earns an 8.0 on this need. Its line reads: "Balances earn 1.3% APY on Standard up to USD 250,000 when monthly activity goals are met, 1.75% APY on Plus and 3.0% APY on all balances on Premier." The top rate needs the paid plan. The free one needs activity every month.

For Square the mark is 4.5, earned by its connected savings account. That account pays "1.75% APY with no stated minimum, well below top treasury products." Its banking runs through an affiliate, Square Financial Services. The card calls that affiliate "a Utah-chartered industrial bank with its own FDIC insurance."

Axos, a digital bank in San Diego, sits at 4.0. The Axos card is precise about the gap: "Insured Cash Sweep expands deposit insurance to $265 million, but Axos publishes no specific yield for Basic Business Checking balances." Broad insurance and an unknown yield make a strange pair for a company sitting on cash.

What do the conditions on a yield cost?

A headline rate always comes with terms, and the terms decide whether a startup sees the rate at all. Three kinds of condition show up again and again on the cards.

The first condition is monthly activity on the account. Bluevine’s free plan pays its rate only "when monthly activity goals are met," so a quiet month can pay nothing. The second is the plan itself, since the highest rates sit behind a monthly subscription.

The third condition is the size of the balance itself. Mercury’s card says its top Treasury yield "assumes more than USD 20 million on deposit," a balance few seed-stage companies will ever hold in one place.

Each of those conditions has a cost in dollars. A paid plan costs a fixed fee every month, an activity goal costs time and card spending, and a size floor locks a startup out of the advertised rate until a later round. I’d run those numbers before believing any rate.

Treasury products: the high interest business checking that isn’t checking

The highest marks on the line go to products that move cash out of the deposit account altogether. A high interest business checking advert often means one of these, and the cards separate the two.

Mercury matches Bluevine’s 8.0 with a different product. Mercury’s line quotes a Treasury yield of "up to 3.89% net" in late August. It adds that "that top rate assumes more than USD 20 million on deposit," and then sets a floor: Treasury "requires USD 250,000 across Mercury accounts."

The Airwallex yield product earns that card a 7.5. That product pays between 3.30% and 3.79% on dollars by plan, with about one billion dollars under management at the end of 2025.

Wise scores 6.0, and its caveat made me stop. According to the card, Wise Interest places balances "in government-backed funds for a 0.26% annual fee," and that "capital is at risk." That is a fund, not a deposit, so no FDIC insurance covers it.

None of this makes treasury products bad for a startup. It makes them different from checking, and a sensible cash plan keeps the two in separate columns.

Business bank account interest rates versus deposit insurance

Every rate decision for a startup is also an insurance decision. Business bank account interest rates on a deposit sit inside FDIC insurance up to the limit. Money in a fund sits outside that cover.

Our earlier note on sweeps worked through the arithmetic of spreading a balance across banks, and a later piece compared money market funds with Treasury bills directly, with the same question in mind. The interest line on a card is the short version of both, since it shows where the yield comes from and therefore which protection applies, with deposit insurance on one side and market risk on the other.

Bluevine’s insurance runs through a sweep network to three million dollars, according to its card. Axos stretches it much further through its sweep. Mercury’s partner banks provide sweep cover as well, and its Treasury product is a separate product with its own terms.

Take a seed round of five million dollars. Parked in plain checking at a large bank, most of it sits above the FDIC limit and earns almost no interest. The same round split between insured sweep deposits and a Treasury product earns more and comes with a clear map of what is protected.

How does the index score banks without a published rate?

Many smaller banks have no rate on their cards yet, and the index handles them with a stated default. The method says that where sources are silent, "the score reflects what that type of institution typically offers."

On the interest line, that default is 5.0 for a licensed bank. The cards for Grasshopper, nbkc, Live Oak and Column all show it, with the same sentence: the bank "can take deposits and run payments," while its actual terms remain unchecked.

That 5.0 is a placeholder, not a promise of a good rate. A small bank may pay well above the big three, or no interest whatever. The only way to know today is to ask the bank for its rate sheet, in writing, before moving money.

Do payment companies pay interest on balances?

Mostly they don’t, and their cards explain why in one line. Brex, Elavon and several other payment firms score 2.0 on interest, each with the note that the firm "takes no deposits and makes no loans."

Payoneer scores lower still on the same line, at 1.5. Its card says "The pricing page lists no interest or yield product on balances." Fiserv, a processor, scores 2.5 because it "is not a deposit-taker, so there is no interest rate, savings account or treasury sweep for a business."

For a startup that leaves revenue sitting in a payment account for weeks, that is real money lost. Moving balances on a schedule to an account that pays costs a few minutes of work each month.

What I’d ask a provider before moving the cash

The card gives the starting point, and the provider’s own rate sheet gives the rest. I’d ask for that sheet in writing, with the date the rate was set and the notice period before it can change.

My next question is about the balance tiers. Bluevine’s card shows its free-plan rate stopping at a quarter of a million dollars, and the rate above that line may differ.

Then I’d ask where the money legally sits. A deposit at an FDIC-insured bank, a sweep across several banks and a fund holding Treasury bills are not the same product, and the account agreement names which one applies.

I’d also ask what happens on the way out. Selling fund units can take time, and a startup that needs cash for payroll on Friday should know that on Monday.

Finally, I’d ask what the rate costs in plan fees, because Mercury’s card lists paid plans at 29.90 and 299 dollars a month, and a higher rate on a small balance can earn less than the fee it requires.

Ranking providers by interest in the finder

The finder on the Bank Index home page can sort every provider by this one need. A founder picks Best interest on business balances, limits the region, and the list re-sorts by that score alone.

Adding a second need changes the picture quickly. A startup that also wants fast onboarding and low fees can tick all three, and the ranking then uses the average of the three. The method warns that a provider without a score on a selected need loses ground, because that need "counts as half of that provider’s average on the selected needs it does have."

That rule protects the reader from thin profiles. Thin profiles can’t win this ranking by default.

The cards for Bluevine, Mercury and Airwallex show the conditions behind the top scores, and the Bank of America card shows the other end of the line.

Limits of the interest scores

Rates move with the central bank, and a card is a dated snapshot. Mercury’s top rate is dated August 2026. Any cut since then has already changed the real figure.

The index is plain about the nature of its marks, and the method section spells out in a single sentence what a score is and what it rests on. Its method says "Scores are editorial judgments based on those facts and on the BankStore team’s aggregated experience," and adds that no client or partner data is used.

My own view is that no score can capture how a particular board wants its cash managed, since that depends on the investors, the runway and the risk the founders can stomach. Some investors expect a written treasury policy. Some funds go further and restrict where portfolio companies may hold money, and a finance lead who misses that clause in a side letter risks an awkward board meeting. A finance lead should run any change past the company’s accountant, and where the sums run to millions of dollars, an investment adviser belongs in that conversation too.

A layered cash plan built from the cards

I’d start with the money the company needs within ninety days. It belongs in an FDIC-insured operating account. Fees and access matter more there.

The next layer is cash for the following year. An insured sweep or a high-yield deposit product does that job, with the conditions read line by line on the card and on the provider’s own rate page.

Only the long-dated reserve belongs in treasury or fund products, held with the knowledge that "capital is at risk" or that the insurance has changed. The full ranking lets a founder test each layer against a different need.

The cards don’t pick the bank for anyone. They show that a plain question about which account pays interest has a different answer for a deposit, a sweep and a fund. The biggest names give the smallest answer of all.