Rho Business Banking Review 2022

Rather than siloing the financial tools a business needs to succeed, Rho is working to create one centralized, integrated system that reduces the effort needed to get the maximum impact. If your business is growing quickly and you need a bank that will keep up with you, bringing ease and efficiency to your finances, this may be the option for you. Read on to learn everything you need to know about Rho Business Banking.

What is Rho Business Banking?

Rho Business Banking is an all-in-one, fully-digital platform that provides quickly growing businesses with the banking, expense management, and accounts payable tools they need in one place. Rather than working with three separate platforms to accomplish these jobs, Rho allows modern business owners to do all financial tasks in one place. Rho also provides customers with a luxury banking experience, offering premium account features, corporate cards, and savings accounts that can hold surplus capital up to $75 million.

Rho Business Banking Pros and Cons

Like any service, platform, or product, there are pros and cons to Rho Business Banking. For some, these are deal breakers, while others won’t mind navigating them—it all depends on your business, circumstance, and specific needs. Read on to learn about the main pros and cons of Rho Business Banking so you can determine if it’s the right fit for your business.

Pros of Rho Business Banking

ALL-IN-ONE FINANCIAL SERVICES. Rho Business Banking allows you to maximize your financial impact with one account on a free, fully integrated platform. Track money entering and exiting your business through deposits and payments, create budgets for your team, automate accounts payable without any fees, and get unlimited corporate cards. Plus, Rho connects with Sage, QuickBooks, and Wave so you can easily keep track of all your business expenses.

FDIC-INSURED. Rho Business Banking accounts are provided through two FDIC members: Sterling National Bank and Evolve Bank & Trust. Because of this, both banking and treasury accounts created with Rho are insured by the FDIC. Checking accounts are insured for up to $250,000 and treasury management accounts, which function essentially as savings accounts, can be insured for up to $75 million.

RHO REWARDS. Corporate credit cards provided through Rho can be either physical or digital cards and receive up to 1.75% cash back on approved purchases. Rho credit card rewards are based on a flexible reward structure that is determined based on the repayment terms of your business, which can be adjusted four times a year.

TEAM ACCOUNTS. Create team accounts so your departments and employees can track their budget and spending as a group. This will also help business owners track which teams are under- or overspending and adjust the budget accordingly. By granting individual teams access to budgetary information relevant to their work, you ensure everyone is informed and striving to hit their financial targets.

Cons of Rho Business Banking

LOW APY. While both business and treasury accounts from Rho Business Banking earn APY, their rate is considerably lower than the rate offered by many of their competitors’ business accounts: a measly 0.01% to the 0.25% to 2.07% others are offering at the time of this article’s publication. If that’s a deal breaker for you, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

LACK OF ATM ACCESS. Another ding for this bank is that, although Rho offers an unlimited number of credit cards for their business banking customers, they cannot be used to withdraw money from the ATM. If withdrawing cash is a routine part of your business activity, Rho likely isn’t a good fit for you.

Who is Rho Business Checking Best For?

If you’re running a modern, digitally-based business that’s growing rapidly, Rho is a great option to consider. Their checking accounts make it easy to manage daily operations, allow for multiple accounts to be established for each tax ID—meaning you can get as many team members involved as you need to keep key players on target—and are incredibly secure. The FDIC insures checking accounts up to $250,000.

Rho is fast and fee-free—you can expect same-day ACH, unlimited domestic and international USD wire transfers, bill pay, and foreign card transactions without any penalties. While Rho isn’t a bank itself, its products and services are backed by a number of reputable partner institutions, including Evolve Bank & Trust and Sterling Bank.

Who Should Consider Using Rho Business Banking?

While the perks outlined above are robust, they don’t make Rho a perfect fit for every business. If frequently withdrawing business funds in cash is important for your work, Rho likely isn’t the right choice for you since you can’t use credit cards at the ATM.

Other important considerations include how much money your business is likely to spend each month using the Rho credit cards and how much money you have to keep in your account consistently. Rho business accounts require a minimum account balance of $50,000 or monthly spending of at least $5,000 on corporate credit cards. If those numbers are out of scope for your business, a business account without balance minimums and spending limits will be an important feature to look for elsewhere.

How Rho Business Banking Works

Applying for a business account and a corporate card with Rho is easy—no personal guarantees are required, and the application process will not affect your credit score. To open an account with Rho Business Banking, just visit the Rho website, click “get started” in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and follow the prompts as directed.

All applicants must first provide general business information and specify if they’re interested in a business account only or a credit card as well. They’ll also ask for information about your business structure, as well as legal documents like company bylaws and an EIN letter.  You’ll also be asked if you want to invite colleagues to join your team. To do so, click “invite a collaborator” to email them an invitation.

Key Rho Business Banking Features

While every business owner will be looking for different things in a bank, we’ve reviewed Rho’s offerings and pulled together a short list of things we think people will benefit from knowing. Read about them below, then head to Rho’s website to find answers to your remaining questions.

Rho credit cards

Get unlimited physical or digital credit cards to allow your business partners easy access to the funds they need. Rho credit cards use the Mastercard network to ensure the utmost security for users. Oversee team spending by setting spending limits and restrictions. Modify restrictions, lock or cancel credit cards at any time, and earn up to 1.75% cash back on approved corporate purchases.

Expense tracking

Visit Rho’s central dashboard to see in real time how expenses are being accrued. You’re also able to assign spending categories or automatically link purchases to the team who initiated the purchase, allowing you to easily see where your money is going. This creates transparency and allows for real-time adjustments to be made in your budget.

Automated bill pay and synced accounting

Automate accounts payable and accounting through the Rho platform. Send, receive, approve, and pay invoices and link to QuickBooks, Sage, or Wave in order to more easily reconcile and categorize purchases. Doing so makes quarterly and annual accounting tasks a breeze.

High, stable credit limits

Rho provides customers with higher, more stable credit limits that don’t fluctuate as much as the rates provided by their competitors. This is because the Rho underwriting process considers annual revenue, cash holdings, data on the company’s growth trajectory, and other data points in order to arrive at their rates—often landing at a higher number than banks using more traditional calculation practices.

International payments

Rho makes it easy to make payments across borders. They offer unlimited, fee-free USD wires to over 160 different countries, as well as international transactions in over 35 other global currencies with a small fee of only 0.6%.

Customer support

When you bank with Rho, you are assigned a dedicated business banker and credit team, who are available to provide individualized and personal support. Customer service options are available between 8am and 9pm EST.

Conclusion

While Rho is a relatively new company, they’ve been backed by a number of older, more established names. They’ve built a solid reputation for themselves as a luxury business banking service and are comfortably ranking among other business finance companies, including Brex and Ramp. If you’re looking for a great neobank experience, Rho Business Banking should be a strong consideration.