Found Business Banking Review 2024

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Found offers a good free business checking account, bundled with plenty of tools designed to help self-employed workers and people with small businesses. If you’re interested in an app that you can bank, budget, invoice, and pay your taxes with, Found might be a good choice. If you’re not impressed by these perks and are searching for other business banking options, you might prefer one of the best free business checking accounts instead.

Found is a financial app designed for self-employed individuals and small businesses. It offers many different tools and services, from a business checking account, to tax software, to bookkeeping and invoicing services.

As part of this, Found offers the Found Free Business Checking Account. This free business checking account comes with several perks, such as early direct deposit*, flexible spending, and pockets.

Users can also choose to pay for Found Plus to receive a up to 1.50% APY (Annual Percentage Yield) on balances up to $20,000, but the nearly $20 per month (or nearly $150 per year) cost is steep if all you’re interested in is a checking account, especially when many of the best high-yield checking accounts are free.

Found Business Checking Account Pros and Cons

About Found Banking

Found is not a bank; it is a financial app. It partners with Piermont Bank, member FDIC in order to provide banking services. In addition to the business checking account, Found offers tools for tax-tracking, expense management, invoices, and more.

Found does not offer 24/7 customer service. You can call or live chat with customer service from Monday to Friday, starting at 8 a.m. PT and ending at 5 p.m. PT. You can also send a message to customer service through the app, and they’ll respond between 7 a.m. PT and 5 p.m. PT Monday through Friday, and between 7 a.m. PT and 3 p.m. PT on Saturday and Sunday.

Found’s mobile banking app is well-rated, with a rating of 4.5 on Google Play and a rating of 4.8 on the App Store.

Found Banking Review

Found’s features for small businesses are its biggest strength, especially for self-employed users. Many of the best banks also come with good perks if you want to explore more options.

Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks to this account, too. Found is a financial app, not a bank, so you won’t be able to go to physical branches to manage your account. Found also doesn’t have its own free ATM network. While the app itself will never charge ATM fees, it doesn’t stop the ATMs themselves from charging fees, which means you could end up paying extra for each ATM usage. There are also fees associated with depositing cash into your account.

And while almost all of Found’s business checking account perks are included in its free plan, you can only earn interest on checking accounts through Found Plus. Found Plus costs nearly $20 per month, or nearly $150 per year, which is quite steep for an online checking account.

Advantages of Using Found Banking

The Found Free Business Checking Account offers a digital banking solution for entrepreneurs. These tools are all in the same Found app; rather than needing to download separate banking apps, tax software, and budgeting apps, you can do everything through Found. And if you already use software like Quickbooks for your company’s finances, you can connect that to your Found account, too.

The checking account itself comes with great perks. The account lets you sort your money into “pockets” with different names and purposes. The account automatically comes with two pockets, titled “Primary” and “Taxes,” and with Found’s “smart percentage,” it allocates a certain percentage of your direct deposits into the taxes category to help make sure you always have enough money when quarterly taxes come due. You can also create and name your own pockets, which can be used to plan savings goals.

The account also comes with early direct deposit and flexible spending features. The early direct deposit perk will let you get things like paychecks up to two days early, while flexible spending will let you overdraw your primary pocket when you make debit card purchases as long as your other pockets have enough money to cover the purchase.

Key Features of Found Banking

Digital-First Approach

As an app, Found is online-only. This comes with many of the upsides and downsides that the best online banks come with. Being online means that Found can be accessed from anywhere; you can access it just as easily from your house as you can traveling. However, this can make it more difficult to do things like deposit cash, and it’s not as easy to get one-on-one help with Found as it is with brick-and-mortar banks.

Business-Friendly Services

There are many innovative financial tools in Found Banking for people who own small businesses. Its tax help is particularly helpful; the pockets system helps you automatically set aside money for quarterly taxes, one of the more stressful aspects of being self-employed. If you’re worried about how to file taxes, you can also file your taxes through the app, which is free when you are Found Plus annual member**.

Security and Reliability

You’ll be able to find secure online banking with Found. Found is partnered with Piermont Bank to provide its banking services. Piermont Bank is FDIC insured up to $250,000 per depositor for each account and ownership category. This means you won’t have to worry about your money. 

Found also encrypts your financial data to keep it safe. In addition, Found has 24/7 fraud monitoring for identity theft protection, only works with PCI-DSS certified payment partners, and has a security program that follows the SOC 2 Framework. Their security framework is also assessed by a third party annually.

Found Banking for Financial Management

Is Found Banking Trustworthy?

We provide Better Business Bureau scores for the institutions we review to help show how trustworthy it is. BBB scores consider several factors, such as how many complaints a company has against it, how quickly it responds to complaints, and if government action has been taken against it.

Found has an A rating from the BBB. It also shows that there have been numerous complaints filed against the business.

However, the bank that Found partners with to provide its banking services, Piermont Bank, has been involved in recent controversies.

In 2024, Piermont Bank entered into a consent order with the FDIC. The FDIC claims that Piermont did not have the internal controls and information systems that it needed to ensure safe banking practices. 

How Found Business Banking Compares

Found Banking vs. Bluevine Business Checking

The Found Free Business Checking Account and Bluevine Business Checking Account are both business checking accounts offered by financial apps. Unlike Found, Bluevine lets you earn interest on the funds in your checking account with its free standard plan, although you have to meet certain criteria. You have to pay to earn interest with Found, and you’ll only earn up to 1.50% APY on balances up to $20,000 when compared to the 2.00% APY Bluevine’s standard plan offers.

However, if you are interested in more premium features and don’t mind paying, Found is the less expensive of the two. Found Plus costs $19.99 per month or $149.99 per year, while Bluevine’s Plus and Premier plans cost $30 and $95 per month, respectively. Keep in mind, though, that Bluevine’s fees are waivable if you meet certain steep saving and spending criteria, while Found’s fees aren’t.

Bluevine Business Checking Review

Found Banking vs. Novo Business Checking

Both Found and Novo are financial apps that offer business checking accounts and tools for small businesses. Novo Business Checking Account only offers up to $7 per month in ATM fee reimbursements. Found does not refund ATM fees.

While Novo offers several tools for small business owners and self-employed workers, it doesn’t let you do your taxes on-platform like Found Banking does. If you want help managing your taxes, especially if you’re self-employed and have to make quarterly tax payments, Found might be a better choice for you.

Novo Business Checking Review

Why You Should Trust Us: How We Reviewed Found Banking

At Business Insider, we use our bank account methodology to review banks and banking products. For checking accounts, we rate the account’s ethics, minimum opening deposit, monthly service fees, overdraft protection, ATM network and fees, customer support, and mobile app from one to five. Then, we average each score together to get our overall rating for the account.

We also use Business Insider’s editorial standards to ensure our work stays high-quality and meets our requirements. This also helps keep us transparent in how we rate banks.

Found Banking FAQs