On Tuesday, U.S. fintech Brex announced the launch of its new corporate card that’s specifically designed to help startups qualify based on funding rather than credit history. This news comes just after Brex completed its Series B funding round, bringing its total funding to $57 million. Investors of the Series B round included Y Combinator Continuity, PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, Facebook investor Yuri Milner, financial services VC Ribbit Capital and former Visa CEO Carl Pascarella.
Founded by Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, two engineers who previously founded Pagar.me, Brex is on a mission to rebuild B2B financial products, starting with a corporate credit card for technology companies.
“We help startups of all sizes (from recently incorporated to later-stage companies) to instantly get a credit card that has 20x higher limits, completely automates expense management, kills receipt tracking and magically integrates with their accounting systems.”
Brex spent the last year working with customers to perfect a product experience using technology to navigate the financial and regulatory hurdles that typically prevent early-stage companies from credit card services. With Brex, growing companies can get instant approval on cards that offer high limits and don’t require any kind of personal guarantee. Dubugras, co-founder and CEO of Brex, stated:
“Startups that have raised millions and are poised for hyper-growth can’t get slowed down hassling with banks requiring personal guarantees and offering meager credit limits. Traditional credit models look at how much a company can pay back in a year based on profits, often disqualifying startups. We rebuilt the financial services tech stack from the ground up and created a new kind of card to specifically meet the needs of startups.”
Dalton Caldwell, Partner, Y Combinator, added:
“As a startup founder, you have so many things going on, and the last thing you want to worry about is finding a quick and easy payments solution for company expenses, let alone personally guaranteeing a card or trying to find an expense management system that works. Brex solves that.”
Brex has over 1,000 customers and is now open to startups nationally with a two-minute application.