That would at the very least be unpopular with their customers, if not outright illegal. What would it look like to be a customer at a bank that did that? Especially for something like SVB - your startup closes its funding round, they wire the money to your bank account, and the bank refuses it?

SVB lobbied for a law that changed a crucial regulatory threshold from $50 billion to $250 billion. From ~2016 to ~2020 their assets jumped from <$50 billion to >$200 billion, with most of that happening from 2020 to 2022.

SVB was perfectly capable of restricting the total amount of assets it held. It wasn't a matter of rejecting small deposits; it was a matter of allowing (or rather, soliciting) huge clients to open new accounts to hold hundreds of millions or billions in assets.

“What do you mean my paycheck isn’t in my account?”

I don’t see that working too well …

Making payroll is chump change compared to the deposits SVP had. Maximum balance of ten million aught to do it.