What Relay is, in 2026
Relay is a US business-banking platform founded in 2018 by Yoseph West (still CEO) and Paul Klicnik, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The parent entity is Relay Financial Technologies, Inc.; the customer-facing banking product is US-only, distinct from any Canadian retail banking or CDIC-insured product. Approximately $51.6M raised across multiple rounds, with the Series B ($44M CAD / ~$32.2M USD, led by Bain Capital Ventures with Better Ventures participating) as the most recent disclosed funding. No publicly priced post-Series-B valuation.
The structural model is partner-bank in the US: customer deposits sit at Thread Bank (Tennessee state-chartered, Member FDIC). Pre-2023, Relay’s sponsor was Evolve Bank & Trust; the migration to Thread Bank happened during 2023 ahead of the broader BaaS regulatory wave. Thread Bank has been the continuous sponsor through 2024-2026, including through Thread Bank’s own May 2024 FDIC consent order (terminated December 2025) — a story that applies operationally to Relay but did not result in any customer-funds incident.
Twenty real checking accounts under one login is the structural feature, and the only US partner-bank product that materializes the Profit First envelope architecture as real FDIC-mapped accounts rather than virtual sub-accounts.
At a glance
Who Relay is for: US SMBs implementing the Profit First methodology (Michalowicz’s Income / Profit / Owner’s Pay / Tax / OpEx envelope model); agencies running per-client or per-channel envelope allocation; multi-entity operators consolidating cash management under one login; bookkeepers and accountants serving Profit First clients (Relay has a deep accountant-channel program); and operators who value granular multi-user permissions for team-level access control.
Who to avoid Relay for: single-checking operators who don’t need the envelope architecture (Novo or Mercury are simpler structural fits); operators wanting APY on the free tier (Starter only pays 0.91%, Grow $30/mo unlocks 1.55%); Canadian SMBs (US-only product); operators needing more than 20 accounts (hard cap); businesses needing a credit card or line of credit from the same provider (Relay has neither); operators on Zelle for business (not supported).
Safety in one sentence: deposits sit at Thread Bank with FDIC pass-through up to $3,000,000 per business via Thread Bank’s Insured Cash Sweep program, with the standard $250,000 ceiling applying to balances the sweep cannot allocate.
Bank structure & deposit protection
Relay Financial Technologies, Inc. is not a chartered bank. The Toronto-based parent is a financial-technology company that operates a US-only business-banking experience on top of Thread Bank, a Tennessee state-chartered commercial bank (Member FDIC). The FDIC counterparty for customer deposits is Thread Bank, not Relay — the routine BaaS structural separation that means customer deposits would not be exposed to Relay’s creditors in the event of a Relay corporate-distress scenario.
The differentiating mechanic is Thread Bank’s Insured Cash Sweep program, which extends FDIC pass-through to $3,000,000 per business by distributing balances above the standard $250,000 ceiling across multiple FDIC-insured banks in $250,000 buckets. Each bucket qualifies for full FDIC coverage at its respective bank. The customer sees a consolidated Relay balance; underneath, the funds are spread across the sweep network.
The Thread Bank consent-order story. On May 21, 2024, the FDIC issued consent order FDIC-24-0022b against Thread Bank, citing deficiencies in BaaS third-party risk-management, AML/KYC, and growth-stress-modeling — part of the broader 2024 BaaS regulatory wave that also captured Evolve Bank & Trust, Lineage Bank, Choice Financial, and other sponsor banks. Industry coverage named Relay among Thread Bank’s fintech partners, along with Baselane, Cleo, and others. The consent order required Thread Bank to remediate AML/KYC and risk-management controls, restrict growth pending remediation, and submit to FDIC oversight on BaaS program-management. The consent order was terminated on December 22, 2025, indicating Thread Bank had completed remediation to the FDIC’s satisfaction — published by the FDIC in the December 2025 enforcement-actions batch.
No customer-funds loss at Relay was reported during the consent-order period. The remediation was operational and supervisory — Thread Bank tightened BaaS controls and reduced growth pace — rather than a customer-deposit failure. Operators considering Relay should treat the episode as the BaaS operational-fragility footnote that applies to every partner-bank fintech: sponsor-bank regulatory exposure is real, FDIC pass-through is the customer-side backstop, and termination of the consent order in December 2025 is the operational signal that Thread Bank cleared the supervisory bar.
The Synapse footnote. Relay was not a Synapse customer. The May 2024 Synapse bankruptcy was a separate story from Thread Bank’s consent order — Synapse was BaaS middleware that connected fintechs like Yotta and Juno to partner banks. Relay contracted directly with Thread Bank rather than through Synapse middleware, which insulated Relay balances from the Synapse fallout entirely. The two stories landed in the same 2024 regulatory wave but had distinct mechanics.
The fee schedule
Relay restructured pricing in 2025 — the prior "Relay Free / Relay Pro" naming was replaced with the three-tier Starter / Grow / Scale structure. Any review still citing "Relay Pro" is dated to 2024 or earlier. The three tiers gate APY on savings and discount wire / same-day-ACH costs as the operator moves up the ladder; the 20-checking-account feature and 50-debit-card ceiling are constant across all tiers.
| Item | Starter (free) | Grow ($30/mo) | Scale ($90-120/mo) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | $0 | $30 | $90 promo / $120 list |
| Checking accounts | Up to 20 | Up to 20 | Up to 20 |
| Savings accounts | Up to 2 | Up to 2 | Up to 2 |
| APY on savings (variable) | 0.91% | 1.55% | 2.68% |
| Debit cards (physical + virtual) | Up to 50 | Up to 50 | Up to 50 |
| Outgoing domestic wire | $8 | Discounted | Lowest |
| Outgoing international wire (local-rail) | $5 | Discounted | Lowest |
| Outgoing international wire (SWIFT) | $25 | Discounted | Lowest |
| Incoming wires | Free | Free | Free |
| Same-day ACH | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | Up to 10 free / mo |
| Multi-user roles + permissions | Included | Included | Included |
| ATM (Allpoint, 55,000+ surcharge-free) | Free | Free | Free |
The APY paywall structure is the line item that separates Relay from Lili (which pays APY on its free Core tier) and Mercury (which gives Treasury yield access on the free Standard tier). A Relay Starter user with a $50K idle balance earns 0.91% × $50K ≈ $455/year gross; on Grow at $30/mo (net $360/year on fees) the same balance earns 1.55% ≈ $775/year, netting $415; on Scale at $120/mo the same balance earns 2.68% ≈ $1,340/year, netting $1,340 - $1,440 = -$100. The breakeven from Grow to Scale on APY alone is approximately $63K of balance against the $90/mo difference; Scale becomes net-positive against Grow above that threshold.
Hands-on notes
Signup is online-only, US business with EIN required. No credit pull (Relay has no credit product). Approval is typically same-day for clean applications; multi-member LLCs and S-corps clear roughly as fast as single-member LLCs. Profit First Professionals subscribers have a referral path that often clears faster — the partnership runs through profitfirstprofessionals.com referrals.
The 20-account UX is Relay’s structural advantage. The dashboard surfaces all 20 accounts in a single nav with one-click toggling between them — distinct from competitors where sub-accounts sit under a single primary account and require deeper navigation. Auto-transfer rules between accounts run on percentage or fixed-amount triggers; the canonical Profit First setup auto-routes incoming revenue into Income, then on a Profit First "10th/25th of the month" cadence auto-allocates from Income into Profit / Owner’s Pay / Tax / OpEx by user-defined percentages.
Multi-user permissions are Relay’s second structural strength. Roles, account-level access, transfer approval workflows, and granular permissions are deeper than Novo (which has weak multi-user) and roughly equivalent to Mercury IO. The team-permissions surface is the line that pushes agencies and bookkeeping firms onto Relay rather than Novo or Bluevine — multi-user workflows with role-gated approvals are a core deliverable on the Scale tier.
Accounting integrations are deep and two-way with Xero and QuickBooks Online. Xero sync includes vendor records, unpaid bills imported from Xero, AP-ledger payment recording, and bank-feed sync every few hours; QuickBooks Online has the same two-way bill-pay capability and is listed on the Intuit App Store. Bill Pay is built into Relay with multi-approver workflows on Scale; ACH bill pay is free on all plans, while wire / same-day bill payments price like normal wires.
Friction points that show up in actual usage. No cash deposits except via Allpoint network (surcharge-free at 55,000+ ATMs but no in-app cash deposit flow); no business credit card or line of credit; no business Zelle support; international SWIFT wires at $25 are higher than fintech peers using local rails by default (Mercury, Wise). The 20-account cap is a hard ceiling — operators needing more must open additional Relay logins. The 2025 plan rename invalidates older third-party reviews; verify against the current Starter / Grow / Scale structure rather than the legacy Free / Pro tiers.
Plan & tier comparison
Relay’s plan ladder rewards the operator who runs material wire volume and idle-balance APY seeking. The 20-checking-account feature and 50-card ceiling are constant across tiers; the tier ladder gates APY rate, wire discount depth, and same-day ACH inclusion. The decision tree depends on operating balance and wire volume.
| Feature | Starter (free) | Grow ($30/mo) | Scale ($90 promo / $120 list) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $0 | $30 | $90 / $120 |
| Checking accounts (FDIC-mapped) | Up to 20 | Up to 20 | Up to 20 |
| Debit cards | Up to 50 | Up to 50 | Up to 50 |
| Savings APY (variable) | 0.91% | 1.55% | 2.68% |
| Same-day ACH | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | Up to 10 free / month |
| Wire discount tier | Standard ($8 / $5 local / $25 SWIFT) | Discounted | Lowest in plan ladder |
| Multi-user roles + auto-transfer rules | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Two-way Xero + QuickBooks bill pay | Yes | Yes | Yes + advanced approval workflows |
| FDIC pass-through | $3M via Thread Bank sweep | $3M via Thread Bank sweep | $3M via Thread Bank sweep |
The breakeven analysis: a Profit First operator running $50K of idle savings finds Starter ($455/yr APY) inferior to Grow ($775/yr APY, net $415 after $360 in fees); the same operator at $100K of idle savings on Grow earns $1,550/yr against $360 in fees for net $1,190 — better than Starter ($910) by $280. At $100K, Scale’s 2.68% earns $2,680 gross, against $1,440 in fees for net $1,240 — only $50 better than Grow at this balance level. Scale earns its place above approximately $200K of idle balance, where the 2.68% / 1.55% rate spread compounds against the $90/mo price differential.
Caveats
Plan rename in 2025 invalidates older reviews. Free / Pro → Starter / Grow / Scale plus APY paywall by tier is the 2025 restructure. Any third-party review citing "Relay Pro $30/mo with 3% APY" is stale; the current structure paywalls APY at 0.91% / 1.55% / 2.68% by tier rather than at a single rate.
APY is paywalled by tier. Starter (free) only earns 0.91% — about a third of the Scale rate. Operators with material idle balance should run the breakeven math at their balance level before defaulting to Starter for "free" reasons; the opportunity cost is real for balances above ~$50K.
20-account cap is hard. Operators implementing Profit First with more than 20 buckets (multi-entity operators, large Profit First implementers with sub-bucketing) must consolidate or open additional Relay logins. There is no in-product mechanism to expand beyond 20 accounts on a single login.
Canadian parent but US-only product. Canadian SMBs cannot open a Relay account despite the Toronto-headquartered parent. There is no Canadian retail banking product, no CDIC-insured account, and no path for Canadian-resident operators to onboard.
No business credit card, no line of credit, no Zelle for business. These are the standard honest-comparison-table exclusions. Bluevine has a line of credit and an invitation-only Cashback Mastercard; Mercury has a corporate card; Relay has neither.
International SWIFT wires at $25. Higher than fintech peers using local rails by default. Operators with material cross-border flow should compare against Wise Business or Mercury before defaulting to Relay for outbound international.
Thread Bank consent-order footnote. The May 2024 FDIC consent order (terminated December 2025) is the operational-fragility footnote that applies to Relay’s sponsor bank. No customer-funds incident occurred; the order required Thread Bank to remediate BaaS controls and restrict growth pending remediation. The post-termination structural position is operationally clean, but the episode is real and worth a footnote in honest sponsor-bank diligence.
No invoicing product. Novo, Found, Lili, and Bluevine all include invoicing; Relay does not. Operators who invoice clients regularly will need an external invoicing surface (Wave, FreshBooks, Xero Invoicing, QuickBooks Invoicing) or bolt-on tooling.
Relay vs. Bluevine vs. Novo
The closest structural competitors are Bluevine (lower-mid-market SMBs with yield + $3M sweep) and Novo (integration-first SMBs with $250K single-bank). The three solve overlapping but distinct problems; the right pick depends on whether the operator needs Profit First envelope architecture, raw operating-balance yield, or Stripe-payout-acceleration.
Relay vs. Bluevine. Both extend FDIC to $3M via sweep. Relay’s differentiator is 20 individual FDIC-mapped checking accounts with auto-transfer rules — the structural fit for Profit First. Bluevine’s differentiator is 3.0% APY uncapped on the operating balance at the Premier tier. For a Profit First operator running Income / Profit / Owner’s Pay / Tax / OpEx envelopes, Relay’s architecture is irreplaceable; Bluevine’s 20 sub-accounts on Premier are virtual sub-accounts and don’t replicate the structural separation. For an operator who wants one operating account at maximum yield without envelope architecture, Bluevine Premier wins on rate. Bluevine also has a Line of Credit ($250K) and an invitation-only Cashback Mastercard; Relay has neither.
Relay vs. Novo. Different ICPs. Relay wins for agencies and multi-checking operators with team-permission needs and Profit First implementation. Novo wins for integration-marketplace-first solopreneurs on Stripe / Shopify / Etsy with Boost cash-flow acceleration. Novo pays 0% APY where Relay Starter pays 0.91%; Novo has $250K single-bank FDIC where Relay extends to $3M; Novo has a deeper third-party integration marketplace where Relay focuses depth on Xero and QuickBooks. An e-commerce solopreneur picks Novo; a Profit-First-implementing agency picks Relay.
FAQ
- Is Relay a bank?
- No. Relay Financial Technologies, Inc. is a fintech with a Toronto parent. The US deposit product is held at Thread Bank (TN state-chartered, Member FDIC). The Canadian parent has no CDIC-equivalent product.
- How does Relay’s $3M FDIC pass-through work?
- Through Thread Bank’s Insured Cash Sweep program. Balances above $250K are distributed across multiple FDIC-insured banks in $250K buckets, each qualifying for full FDIC coverage at its respective bank.
- What is Relay’s 20 checking accounts feature?
- Up to 20 individual FDIC-mapped checking accounts under one login — real accounts with their own routing/account numbers, not virtual envelopes. Up to 50 debit cards across them. The cap is 20 on all plans; operators needing more open additional logins.
- What APY does Relay pay in 2026?
- Starter (free) 0.91%; Grow ($30/mo) 1.55%; Scale ($90-120/mo) 2.68%. Up to 2 savings accounts on all tiers. The 2025 plan restructure paywalled APY by tier (was previously a flat rate).
- Was Relay affected by the Thread Bank FDIC consent order?
- Indirectly named — the May 2024 FDIC consent order (FDIC-24-0022b) cited Thread Bank for BaaS risk-management deficiencies. No customer-funds loss at Relay was reported. The consent order was terminated December 22, 2025.
- Can Canadian SMBs open a Relay account?
- No. Despite the Toronto parent, the banking product is US-only. There is no Canadian retail product and no CDIC-insured account available to Canadian-resident operators.
- How does Relay compare with Bluevine?
- Relay’s 20 individual checking accounts is the Profit First structural fit; Bluevine’s 3.0% uncapped APY on Premier ($95/mo) is the yield-on-balance pick. Both have $3M sweep. Bluevine has Line of Credit and an invitation-only Cashback Mastercard; Relay has neither.
Who Relay is for
Use Relay if you run a US SMB implementing the Profit First methodology (Income / Profit / Owner’s Pay / Tax / OpEx envelopes); if you run an agency or multi-channel business needing per-channel or per-client envelope allocation in real checking accounts; if you value granular multi-user permissions for team-level access and approval workflows; or if you’re a bookkeeper / accountant serving Profit First clients (Relay has a deep accountant-channel program). The 20-account architecture is irreplaceable for these ICPs; the APY paywall structure means Scale ($90-120/mo) earns its keep only above ~$200K of idle balance.
Use Bluevine, Mercury, Novo, or a chartered business bank instead if you operate a single checking account and don’t need envelope architecture; if you want APY on the free tier (Lili Core or Mercury’s Treasury access); if you bank as a Canadian SMB (Relay is US-only); if you need more than 20 accounts on a single login (no in-product expansion path); if you need a business credit card, line of credit, or invoicing in the same product (Relay has none of these); or if your client base pays via Zelle (not supported).
References
Primary-source list, with capture date 2026-05-11. Relay’s pricing surface, the Thread Bank sponsor relationship, and the Insured Cash Sweep composition re-price periodically; operators treating these figures as load-bearing should re-verify against the source URLs at decision time.
- Relay — Pricing (Starter / Grow / Scale, 2025 plan restructure)
- Relay — New pricing plans announcement (2025 Starter/Grow/Scale launch)
- Relay — Subscription plan overview
- Relay — Thread Bank as partner bank
- Relay — Insured Cash Sweep program ($3M FDIC via Thread Bank)
- Relay — Profit First official banking platform (2023 partnership)
- Relay — 2023 Profit First partnership announcement
- Mike Michalowicz — Relay endorsement page
- Relay — Xero two-way bill pay integration
- Relay — QuickBooks Online two-way bill pay integration
- Relay — Allpoint ATM network (55,000+ surcharge-free)
- PYMNTS — Thread Bank FDIC consent order (May 2024, FDIC-24-0022b)
- Banking Dive — Thread Bank BaaS oversight, Relay named as partner
- FDIC — December 2025 enforcement-orders publication (consent-order termination batch)
- Tracxn — Relay Financial Technologies, Inc. (Toronto HQ, ~$51.6M total funding, Bain Capital Ventures)
FDIC pass-through coverage is per partner bank, not per fintech. If you hold funds at multiple Chime-style fintechs that share the same partner bank, your $250,000 FDIC limit aggregates across those balances. Crypto holdings, brokerage cash awaiting investment, and overdraft-protection lines are NOT FDIC-insured — verify product type before assuming cover. Reg E provides limited-liability rights for unauthorised electronic-fund transfers when reported within the statutory window.
Premium plans
- Free — 20 checking accounts, 50 cards, 0.91% APY, $8 outgoing wire
- Mid tier — 1.55% APY, reduced wire fees, 2025 restructure replaced 'Relay Pro'
- Top tier — 2.68% APY, up to 10 free same-day ACH/month, lowest wire fees. $90 promo / $120 list