The digital banking platform Found is an excellent business checking option for freelancers, self-employed individuals, and sole proprietors looking for affordable digital banking solutions. Aside from having no required monthly fees, Found offers useful features, such as free built-in bookkeeping tools, invoicing software, and tax tools, that can help any business owner save time and money on business paperwork.
It doesn’t do credit checks, which makes the platform accessible to any type of business owner. Although it offers a wide range of business tools, it lacks brick-and-mortar branches. Found’s core features are free, and there’s also a paid product, Found Plus**
Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Business banking services are provided by Lead Bank, Member FDIC. The Found Mastercard Business debit card is issued by Lead Bank pursuant to a license from Mastercard Inc.
Found’s core features are free. Found also offers an optional paid product, Found Plus for $19.99 / month or $149.99 / year. There are no monthly account maintenance fees, but transactional fees for wires, instant transfers, and ATM apply. Read more at found.com/legal/fee_schedule
- How Found Stacks Up With Its Competitors
- When Found Is a Good Fit
- When To Consider Found Alternatives
- Found Business Checking Overview
- Found Business Checking Requirements
- Found Business Checking Features
- Other Found Business Products
- Found Business Checking Reviews From Users
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Bottom Line
How Found Stacks Up With Its Competitors
 Business CheckingFound is a financial technology (fintech) platform backed by and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)-insured through a supporting bank partnership with Piermont Bank. |  BasicLili is a financial technology (fintech) platform backed by and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)-insured through a supporting bank partnership with Choice Financial Group. |  Business CheckingNovo is a financial technology (fintech) platform backed by and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)-insured through a supporting bank partnership with Middlesex Federal Savings. |  Business CheckingRelay is a financial technology (fintech) platform backed by and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)-insured through a supporting bank partnership with Thread Bank. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Required Monthly Fee | No required monthly fee** | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Detailed Expense Tracking | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Built-in Bookkeeping | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Tax Tools | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ |
| Personalized Invoicing | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ |
| Visit Found | Visit Lili | Visit Novo | Visit Relay |
For a detailed comparison of features between these providers, check our guides:
When Found Is a Good Fit
- You are comfortable with banking exclusively online: Found is one of the best online business fintechs*. While it lacks brick-and-mortar branches, it still lets you move money through debit card transactions, transfers, and payment apps like CashApp, PayPal, and Venmo.
- You want to bank without required monthly fees: The Found business checking account does not have required monthly fees**. minimum opening deposit requirements, or minimum balance requirements, which is one of the reasons we recommended it’s free business checking accounts**. These low fees make it suitable for self-employed professionals, freelancers, and sole proprietors.
- You don’t have a good credit history: Found will let you open an account without performing a credit check.
- You want a provider that can help you keep track of your expenses: Found is one of the leading fintechs* for self-employed individuals, we named Found the best provider for detailed expense tracking. Whenever you make transactions with your Found debit card, Found automatically tracks and categorizes the expense. It uses your banking history to create detailed expense, income, profit, and loss reports in real time.
- You want a platform that can help you stay on top of your taxes: The Found business checking account offers expense management and tax planning tools, helping you categorize expenses and track tax write-offs for more savings. This is one of the reasons Found is one of our top small business checking accounts.
When To Consider Found Alternatives
- You use wire transfers regularly: Found charges a fee of $15 for outgoing wire transfers. The best provider for affordable wire transfers is Mercury, which charges zero wire transfer fees. Read our review of Mercury business checking for more information.
- You need access to a full range of banking products: The only banking product Found offers is business checking. If you’re looking for an online provider with a complete business banking product selection, consider First Internet Bank, which offers business checking, savings accounts, money market accounts, CDs, and lending products. Our First Internet Bank business checking review discusses these products in depth.
- You want to earn interest on checking deposits: The Found business checking account does not earn interest (however, by upgrading to the paid plan, Found Plus** you can earn an APY of 1.50% on balances up to $20,000). The best provider for high annual percentage yield (APY) is Bluevine, which earns 1.3% APY on qualifying balances up to $250,000 for Standard Checking accounts. To learn more about how to qualify for Bluevine’s APY, see our review of Bluevine business checking.
If your small business meets one or more of these scenarios, check out our guide to the best small business checking accounts for additional recommendations.
Found Business Checking Overview
| Found Business Checking | |
|---|---|
| Required Opening Deposit | None |
| Required Minimum Balance | None |
| Direct Deposit Limit | None |
| Required Monthly Fees | No required monthly fees** |
| ACH Fees and Limits | None |
| Debit Card Purchase LimitYou can request for a limit increase online or through the mobile app. | $4,000 daily |
| ATM Withdrawal LimitYou can request for a limit increase online or through the mobile app. | $550 daily |
| Linked Bank Account Transfer LimitYou can request for a limit increase online or through the mobile app. | Incoming: Not specified Outgoing: $5,000 daily |
| Payment Apps Transfer LimitYou can request for a limit increase online or through the mobile app. | Incoming: None Outgoing: $4,000 daily |
| Domestic Wire Transfer Fees | Free incoming wires; $15 per outgoing wire |
| International Wire Transfer Fees | Not supported |
| ATM Fees | No fees from Found but third-party operator fees may apply |
| Cash Deposit | Accepted at more than 79,000 retail locations; $2 per cash deposit |
| Incoming Cash Deposit Limit | $3,000 weekly $4,000 monthly |
| Incoming Check Deposit Limit | $2,000 weekly |
| APY | None |
Found Business Checking Requirements
You can visit the provider’s website to open a business checking account. Part of the Found business checking account requirements is that business applicants provide the following information:
- Your legal name
- Your address
- Your Social Security number (for verification purposes only)
- Your date of birth
- An estimate of how much you expect your business to earn within the year
- Your tax filing situation
- Additional details about your tax situation.
Certain types of businesses are prohibited from opening an account. See Found’s list of prohibited businesses for more information.
Before opening an account, read our guide on
how to open a business bank account
. It includes a free downloadable checklist of documents typically required upon account opening.
Found Business Checking Features
Business Debit Card
All accounts come with a business debit Mastercard, which provides easy tracking of expenses and payments. You can also freeze your card for security in the Found app. In addition, you can connect Found to useful business platforms, such as Stripe, PayPal, Venmo, and Etsy.
Account Funding Options
Users can transfer funds into their accounts through
- Direct deposits
- Wire transfers
- Square or Stripe payment processors
- Payment apps (Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal)
- Cash deposits (available at over 79,000 retail locations)
- Check deposits for eligible users
- Invoices and payments
Bookkeeping
Found will automatically track and categorize expenses when you use your Found debit card. You can also add expenses made on other platforms manually or add receipts to your transaction history with the app’s built-in photo receipt capture feature.
To give you a clear picture of your business activity, Found uses your account history to create real-time expense, income, profit, and loss reports.
Tax Tools
When Found tracks and categorizes your expenses, it notes down tax-deductible items and analyzes your banking data to provide real-time estimates of how much you owe in taxes. It even auto-generates a self-employed Schedule C form to reduce your paperwork during tax season.
Invoicing
Small business owners can create free, unlimited, and customized invoices for professional branding. The invoicing software includes credit cards, debit cards, direct deposits, Cash App, Zelle, Venmo, and PayPal as payment options. It also allows automated billing through scheduling future and recurring invoices.
Mobile Banking
All of Found’s features are also available through the mobile app. To summarize, the app lets you:
- View balances
- Transfer funds
- Get notifications for transactions
- Create, send, and schedule invoices
- Categorize transactions
- View your tax estimate
- Freeze cards
- Generate your Schedule C form
The Found app obtained excellent ratings, with 4.8 on the App Store from around 14,000 reviews and 4.6 on Google Play from about 1,100 reviews. Most of the feedback is positive, where small business owners appreciated the accounting and tax features that made money management easy.
Other Found Business Products
If you want access to more advanced business tools, you can upgrade to Found Plus, which costs $19.99 per month (or $149.99 per year). Through Found Plus, you can:
- Create unlimited rules for bookkeeping categories
- Create custom bookkeeping categories
- Pull expense data through photo receipt capture
- Export bookkeeping data
- Pay taxes directly from the app (for Schedule C filers on Found Plus**)
- Earn APY bonus
- Benefit from priority customer support
Found Business Checking Reviews From Users
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| No required monthly maintenance fees, no minimum balance requirement, and no initial deposit requirement | Does not offer joint accounts |
| Free bookkeeping software and tax planning tools | |
| Hassle-free online account opening | |
On Trustpilot[3], Found has a rating of 4.6 from nearly 350 reviews. Most Found business checking reviews reflect positive comments. They stated that it has excellent and useful online financial tools for self-employed individuals and small business owners.
Users praised the provider for offering an efficient business banking system that enables easy business expense tracking. Other reviewers also liked the app’s ease of navigation and responsive customer service.
On the flip side, clients complained about their frozen accounts, with no reason given by the provider. Some also reported that Found is slow in posting transferred funds and does not offer loan options.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes, the funds in your account are FDIC-insured up to $250,000 per depositor for each account ownership category. Banking services are provided by Lead Bank, Member FDIC. FDIC insurance only covers the failure of an FDIC-insured depository institution.
Yes, Found lets users deposit cash at over 79,000 retail locations nationwide.
You can use the Found debit card to withdraw your money at ATMs or link a bank account to your Found account to perform fund transfers.
Bottom Line
A Found business checking account is ideal for freelancers, self-employed professionals, and sole proprietors who do the majority of their business management on their own. With Found, you can save on zero required monthly fees and streamline your business operations with built-in accounting, invoicing, and tax tools.
There are also multiple ways to fund your business account—from performing wire transfers and direct deposits to using payment apps and depositing cash at many retail locations, which is convenient for small business owners.
User review references:
1App Store
2Google Play
3Trustpilot
Note: *Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Business banking services are provided by Lead Bank, Member FDIC. The Found Mastercard Business debit card is issued by Lead Bank pursuant to a license from Mastercard Inc.
**Found’s core features are free. Optional subscription to Found Plus for $19.99/month or $149.99/year. There are no monthly account maintenance fees, but other fees such as transactional fees for wires, instant transfers, and ATM apply. Read more.
