Brex, which claims to be the first fully unified global spend platform, launched Brex payables — an AI-enabled Accounts Payable (AP) solution, “combining enhanced bill pay capabilities and purchase cards.”
Brex payables offers the controls “required by an AP team to manage procurement spend seamlessly across invoices and purchase cards, with the flexibility sought by employees for business spend.”
The product leverages AI “across the lifecycle of an invoice, from receiving and matching to approving and coding, offering unprecedented real-time visibility and control of expenses globally, across all payment types: card, ACH, and wire.” And combined with Live Budgets, Brex’s pre-approved spend controls, Brex payables can “enforce bespoke expense policies, per vendor or project, and track budgeted versus actuals in real time.”
With payables, AP teams get “access to high-limit, yet highly controlled purchase cards (P-cards) that offer the flexibility and security of a credit card with the transaction-specific controls required of high-balance spend.”
P-cards are corporate credit cards that “are often provisioned for specific use cases, including those for departments, vendors, teams, and indirect procurement, such as operational spend.”
Brex’s P-cards operate “on the Empower platform, with the same AI-enabled transaction reconciliation tools provided by Brex’s expense management software and employee credit cards.”
Henrique Dubugras, co-founder and co-CEO of Brex, said:
“The combination of Brex’s bill pay offering and its purchase cards enables companies to control all non-payroll spend, invoiced or otherwise. This is particularly important because procurement accounts for a huge portion of customer spend, and therefore without Brex, even small purchases can take up to a week to get approved, slowing down businesses.”
After salary and benefits, procurement spend is “typically the largest budget category for a business.” It involves infrequent, ad-hoc purchases “that often require purchase orders (PO) and lengthy approval processes to ensure alignment with company policies, cash flow requirements, or vendor contract terms.”
Brex payables automate these tasks, “making it easy for employees to make important purchases quickly and within policy while allowing finance teams to track spend, business travel, payments, and reimbursements in one place.” Brex’s intelligent pattern recognition across multiple payment types also “helps accounting teams better identify fraudulent transactions and merchants.”
Global customers that are “transforming their business with the help of Brex capabilities include Alchemy, Northern Data, Revelo Talent Corp., and Yassir Inc.”
Sean Soper, Head of Accounting and Financial Operations at Alchemy, said:
“With Payables, Brex delivers the next AI-powered version of spend management for accounts payables teams. It’s a very modern way of running virtual cards, p-cards, bills, invoices — everything is aggregated within a centralized platform.”
Unique global features of Brex payables include:
- Total spend management in one place. Empower is the only spend management platform that works across invoices, bill pay, purchase cards, corporate cards, and corporate travel.
- AI automation for bill payments and accounts payable. Brex uses AI to intelligently extract invoice details at an itemized level, match invoices to PO, flag suspicious invoices for fraud, and code invoice details to accounts – all on one unified platform.
- Purchase cards with customizable controls and global capabilities. P-cards enable transaction-level approval flows and restrictions designed to provide unique visibility and control to AP teams. They include purchase amounts, approved vendors, and/or approved or blocked categories, as well as set monthly or time-based spending limits to ensure that charges are not impacting spending limits.
- Pay vendors globally. Brex customers can pay their bills for international vendors and the purchase cards are global-ready with 3DS, chip and pin protection, and worldwide acceptance of up to 20 different currencies.
- Multiple funding sources. Brex customers can fund invoice payments by connecting their corporate bank account, or use their Brex business account for fast bill payments, through wires, ACH or checks.