What is Brex Card and how it works

What is the Brex Card? Have you ever heard of this before?

Promoted as “the smartest corporate credit card,” Brex Card is bottom-line, a business credit card. 

What makes Brex Card so great we would write a full article about it? And we even mentioned it on our video about startup tools for financials:

Check below for a quick run through this startup business card. And, in case you’re wondering, we’re not being paid by Brex Card to publish any of this information, so rest assured there’s no trick to what we’re reporting. 

What is the Brex Card?

Brex Card is a charge business credit card that has no annual fees. 

As a charge card, there are no interest rates to compare, either. There are no interests at all! This card needs to be linked to a bank account for automatic withdrawals every statement. That means you need to pay charges by the end of each month. And that is to be done in full. 

In general, Brex Card exists to service startups, companies doing e-commerce, and those in life sciences. 

How Brex works

If there’s no interest, where do Brex get their money? Here’s a startup lesson to the value of profitable business partnerships, by the way. 

Brex paired with MasterCard. So how Brex works is that every time you swipe a Brex Card, Brex is getting a percentage of your transaction total from MasterCard. 

Think of business swipes in terms of sums of money and frequency of transactions. Numbers start adding, right? 

Team collaboration

Care to share your business card with your team for expenses? Last we checked, the first 5 Brex Cards are free. Any additional plastic for other team members after that will cost $5 per user per month. But you get virtual cards immediately after approval of your Brex Card, so there’s always the option of using that benefit. 

Rewards program

Without a cap as to what you can earn, which already beats other credit cards’ rewards programs in a way, the Brex for Startups card lets you earn 7x the points on rides in any of the most popular transportation apps, such as Lyft and Uber. And you can work these up collectively is the big plus to team collaboration beyond office or home walls. 

Though this startup card also offers rewards for purchases on traveling needs and restaurants spend as most programs do, they do so at a four and 3x multiplier, respectively. But also, Brex went a bit of the extra mile to include 2x rewards on any subscriptions to services like Slack, GitHub, and Salesforce. Pretty smart, right? These are the tiny additions and differences that make the card’s startup tailoring shine.  

Take into account we’re talking about the Brex for Startups card here, right? This one’s different from Brex for eCommerce (which we outline below) and bears no multiplier benefit at all.

Also, don’t be lured by the high numbers in regards to categories. Look at the tricky side of things, too. We could say that the generosity Brex exercises in transportation and taxi with seven-fold multiplier rewards can only scale so much in expenses that will hardly add up as quickly as hotel or flight bills would. Even if all collaborators expense their Uber or Lyft through Brex, you might only be leveling on additional card costs, as well. 

We also couldn’t find any advertisement on TSA Pre✓ or Global Entry refunds. And though you can transfer your points to seven different airlines, there’s nothing to be heard of priority seating or free checked bags like other card companies offer. 

Here’s a list of participating airlines, in case it sparks your interest:

• AeroMexico Club Premier
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue
• Avianca LifeMiles
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
• JetBlue TrueBlue
• Qantas Frequent Flyer
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
  

Other than above, you can also throw $5K in credit at Amazon Web Services over the course of a single year, $150 to spend in Google Ads, and a 50% discount on your first six months with Expensify. 

eCommerce or Startup Card?

As promised, we’re touching upon the differences between Brex for eCommerce and those for startups. Let’s get those cleared and out of the way. 

The card for online businesses does not offer the rewards multipliers we described above. We already started with that. 

On top of that, Brex for eCommerce allows for double the float with a 60-day one instead of just 30. They do this so companies can match inventory and finances to healthier relations with Brex. 

Your credit limit, on the other hand, is determined differently between the two cards. For those businesses dealing with online sales, the credit limit caps at 50-100% of the company’s monthly sales. Your Shopify (or similar platform) data will help determine those sums. There’s also a max of $5 million on this one. 

Relation with credit scores and history

Now, in case you’re wondering, applying to Brex won’t hurt your score, but it can certainly help it. Whenever you pay on-time, Brex will report that to Dun & Bradstreet, as well as Experian, thus helping you build a credit history. And, naturally, for your application, Brex doesn’t look at your credit score, but your company’s actual balances or sales. 

Can Brex Card benefit my startup?

We can imagine how the question following “what is Brex Card?” can be whether Brex Card is a good fit for your business. To help you answer that, we’ve considered a list of benefits. Let’s review the pros, first, and then move to cons or less favorable considerations on Brex Card’s behalf. 

PROS:

• No personal guarantor
• No interests or fees
• No credit score check
• Application review within minutes
• Instant virtual card use
• Accepted in over 200 countries
• No foreign transaction fees
  

CONS:

• Primary business-spending card requirement
• Based on equity
• A substantial reward program only in some areas
  

An overall impression

If your company has already been funded and has money in the bank, Brex might make a compelling case to make of their card your primary one. You can spare upon fees and forget about interest rates. More importantly, Brex helps keep a company’s risk on a particular founder’s financial shoulders. Their welcome packet also makes good rewards available. If you intended to use those tools, their offer could be more appealing, as well. 

However, if you can’t make of Brex Card your go-to-plastic, then accumulating a single Brex point for every dollar might not be too profitable. Think of the multipliers and welcome offers to see if this makes genuine sense for your business in that case. 

Say Slidebean referred you

Remember when we said Brex is not paying us a single dime to put this word out? Well, we mean it. And we’re willing to bet a sandwich or two if you’re up for checking. 

However, and what’s more important, your business can be entitled to a $500 gift card after its first $1,000 spent on Brex Card if you use our CEO’s referral link for your Brex Card application.

On that note, how about you make your gift card spend a tailored design service request for your upcoming startup pitch deck after that? Just a thought ;)