The company was founded in 1973 by fast-food restaurant franchise owner Vernon Hill, a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Hill sought to bring fast food convenience to banking and expanded Commerce from one location to over 435 in thirty-three years.

During the early-mid 2000s, television advertisements for Commerce Bank featured Kelly Ripa and Regis Philbin.

[8] In 2013, a federal court ruled that Commerce could not legally pay Hill because the bank had refused to “to certify it had no reason to believe Hill had committed fraud, breached his fiduciary duty or abused his insider privileges.”[9] Commerce's philosophy was that they were retailers, not bankers, and went so far as to call their various locations stores, not branches.

It was called Mc-Bank because Vernon Hill used his knowledge of the fast food chains he owned and applied it to the banking industry.

[12] An example of such high costs: To enter New York City’s Chinatown market, the company likely spent $306,790 on gifts of rice cookers for fourteen thousand new accounts opened for as little as $250.

[10] But Commerce choosing to be “worst in class on some service dimensions,” including “dismal deposit rates,” generated additional capital for funding extended business hours and in-depth customer service,[14] and free checking accounts “in exchange for little or no interest.”[15] Commerce’s Penny Arcade coin-counting deposit machines could be used without charge even by noncustomers, and raised funds for medical research[16] and hurricane relief.

[2] While most of Commerce Bank's growth was organic, there were five large acquisitions: Loans to its own executives and directors totaled $145.7 million in 2003.

[21] That following August, Commerce Bank Harrisburg extended its deadline to acquire Republic First after it was unable to gain timely regulatory approval.