All-in-one financial platform for a new small business
Michel Myara is co-founder and product designer at looch, where he designs the tools small businesses use to get paid, manage spend, and run their books.
Updated August 2026
No platform covers all five jobs, so decide which two you refuse to split
"All-in-one" usually means three of the five things a new business actually needs: forming the entity, holding money, issuing cards, accepting customer payments, and keeping the books. Most platforms do the middle three and hand the ends to somebody else. The numbers that separate them:
- Novo, Bluevine Standard, Found and Relay Starter all publish a $0/month account; Lili starts at $0 and gates its accounting behind $35/month
- Card acceptance clusters at 2.9% + 30¢ (Novo via Stripe, Found via Stripe, Relay), with Bluevine at 2.9% + 60¢ online and looch at 3.3% + 30¢
- Bookkeeping in-app rather than synced: only Found and looch; the rest integrate with QuickBooks or Xero
- QuickBooks Online is $38/month at Simple Start, and Essentials, Plus and Advanced rose for renewals on or after 8/1/2026
- Formation: almost nobody. Of the platforms here, only looch forms the company
Last verified: August 19th, 2026.
The useful question is not which platform is "best." It is which two jobs you refuse to run in separate tools, because every product here is complete on some axes and empty on others. This page maps them on the same five, with each figure quoted from the provider's own pricing page.
What each platform actually covers
| Platform | Forms the entity | Account | Issues cards | Accepts customer payments | Bookkeeping | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Novo | No | Yes | Debit and credit | Via Stripe, Square, PayPal | Syncs, 40+ tools | $0/month |
| Bluevine | No | Yes | Debit | Native, online and in person | Syncs QuickBooks | $0/month |
| Found | No | Yes | Debit only | Via Stripe | In-app, incl. tax forms | $0/month |
| Lili | No | Yes | Debit only | Via Stripe | In-app, paid tiers only | $0/month |
| Relay | No | Yes | Debit and credit | Online only | Syncs QuickBooks, Xero | $0/month |
| QuickBooks | No | Yes, via Green Dot | Debit | Native | In-app, the incumbent | $38/month |
| looch | Yes | Yes | Smartcards | Native, online and in person | In-app, real time | $249 once, no monthly account fee |
The asterisks that matter more than the table
Novo publishes "No monthly fees. No minimums. No transaction limits," and includes unlimited free invoicing. Its acceptance runs on other people's rails: customers pay "by credit card, debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Venmo through Novo's Stripe, Square," and Novo "does not add a markup" to the pass-through rate. Books sync rather than live there, across "over 40 business tools, Stripe, QuickBooks, Shopify, Square, Xero." Source: Novo. Verified 8/19/2026.
Bluevine is the strongest native acceptance in the set: "Customers can pay via card, ACH, or digital wallet directly to your Bluevine Business Checking account," including Tap to Pay from a phone. Published rates are 2.9% + 60¢ online, 2.7% + 30¢ in person, 3.4% + 60¢ card on file, and 1% ACH. Watch the tiering: Plus is $30/month, and the waiver requires two conditions together, each billing period: an average daily balance of at least $20,000 across the checking account and sub-accounts, and at least $2,000 of card spend. A new business generally meets neither. Source: Bluevine. Verified 8/19/2026.
Found does the most real bookkeeping on a free tier: expense categorization, P&L, tax estimates, and generated Schedule C and 1120 forms, with unlimited free invoicing. Acceptance is Stripe's, at 2.9% + 30¢, and cards are debit only. Source: Found pricing. Verified 8/19/2026.
Lili publishes the sharpest all-in-one asterisk of any provider here, and it is worth quoting exactly: "Accounting, tax preparation and invoicing software is available to Lili Smart and Lili Premium account holders only; applicable monthly account fees apply." A business on the $0 or $15 tier gets none of the all-in-one part. Source: Lili. Verified 8/19/2026.
Relay gives unlimited users and up to 50 debit and credit cards on every plan including the free one, which is the best team structure in the set. Its acceptance is online only, with no in-person or tap to pay, at 2.9% + 30¢, and pay by bank at 1%, 0.75% or 0.50% capped at $10 depending on tier. Settlement is "2 to 3 business days." Passing card fees to customers is a paid-tier feature. Our looch vs Relay comparison goes deeper. Source: Relay pricing. Verified 8/19/2026.
QuickBooks is the accounting incumbent that grew a bank account rather than the reverse: QuickBooks Checking is "totally free to open, with no monthly fees or minimum balances," provided via Green Dot Bank, alongside QuickBooks Payments at 2.99% on invoiced cards and 1% ACH. The accounting is the product, and it is the deepest here. Our looch vs QuickBooks comparison covers the trade. Source: QuickBooks pricing. Verified 8/19/2026.
looch is the only platform in the table that forms the entity. looch Start is $249 all-in including the state filing fee, the EIN and the first year of registered agent, and onboarding continues into no-fee accounts with account and routing numbers, Smartcards, acceptance and real-time accounting where "every charge is tagged and categorized the moment it posts."
Where looch loses, plainly: its card acceptance is 3.3% + 30¢ online and 3% + 15¢ in person, which is above the 2.9% + 30¢ cluster, so a card-heavy business paying by card alone will pay more per transaction at looch than at Novo, Found or Relay. Its instant pay by bank is 1% capped at $10, which reverses that on larger tickets. It is iOS only, with Android published as coming soon. Payroll is published as coming soon and is not live. And looch is not a bank: Simplicity Fintech Inc partners with Stripe Payments Company, with funds held at Fifth Third Bank N.A., Member FDIC, and accounts eligible for FDIC pass-through insurance up to $250,000¹ when the requirements are met. Source: looch pricing. Verified 8/19/2026.
When a stack beats a bundle
Bundles win on setup time and on having one categorized ledger. A four-vendor stack wins more often than bundle marketing admits, and here is the arithmetic, from each vendor's own pricing:
| Stack piece | Typical choice | Published cost |
|---|---|---|
| Formation | LegalZoom or ZenBusiness at $0 plus state fees, or Stripe Atlas at $500 | $0 to $500 once |
| Bank account | Novo, Found or Relay Starter | $0/month |
| Accepting payments | Stripe standard | 2.9% + 30¢, no monthly fee |
| Bookkeeping | QuickBooks Simple Start | $38/month |
That is roughly a $38/month fixed floor, everything else variable. Choose the stack when:
- You need best-in-class on one axis. Deep inventory or multi-entity accounting beats any bundled ledger, and a dedicated processor gives you rates and features no bundled acceptance matches at volume.
- Your accountant already lives in QuickBooks or Xero. Fighting that is rarely worth the saving, and most platforms here sync to it anyway.
- You want to switch one piece without moving your money. Vendors decoupled means a bad processor is a one-week migration, not a bank change.
- Your card volume is large and pure card. At enough volume, negotiated processing beats every published rate in this table, looch's included.
Choose the bundle when the daily work is the cost: when reconciling a bank feed against a separate processor against a separate ledger is the thing eating your week, or when you have not incorporated yet and want the entity, the accounts and the books to exist in one pass. If your question is really "do I need to hire someone for the books," we work through that separately in do you really need a bookkeeper, and if it is "which app does formation and banking together," that is a different and smaller list, covered in company formation and banking in one app.
