I'm looking for a new bank in Manhattan to use for my business account since I'm getting tired of running to Wamego all the time, but I really have no idea which bank would be best.
I do a lot of business online, so there's constantly money going in/out through wires, or ACH transfers, and I'd need to find a bank that is comfortable with that, and has an online banking system that is as close to real time as possible.
Does anybody here have any input or experience they could share? TIA
You need a big bank. The little local and regional guys can't help you. If I am guessing correctly, your biggest need is to be able to be appraised of your cash position on a real-time basis at a moment's notice. Most of the big ones, like BofA, have some cool online pseudo-treasury workstation products. Stuff that would work really well for a small business.
BofA, for example, can handle any payment method you receive or send. Commerce, for example, will have to pull in an intermediary bank if you are doing international wire payments, but they are fine for Fed wires and ACH payments. Chase also has some good online services. Probably the coolest I have heard of is one that Citi is touting that allows you to pull from multiple banks and aggregate it using their online services into a single cash position...but I suspect that it is really more vapor ware at this point.
Point here is choose a big bank that has great online tools. The little guys will preach "service," but that means jackcrap to me if they don't have the "serviceS" that I fracking need. If you absolutely have to have a branch at a certain location, then just open a depository account with a little bank and have it automatically swept into a cash concentration account with a big bank...then do all your own transactions from the big bank account.
