Customer: Brex

Helping businesses spend smarter and move faster

Brex is a modern finance platform empowering over 30,000 companies around the world—from startups to enterprises—to run their finances more intelligently and with less manual effort. In addition to its AI-powered software, which automates and optimizes the vast majority of expense and accounting tasks, its corporate cards offer higher credit lines and powerful controls that increase company spending power and speed.

To provide these increased credit lines, Brex underwrites customers based on their quarterly financial statements or monthly cash flow, among other factors. By using live bank connections for the latter, Brex can more easily and accurately assess financial health, making credit more accessible to a broader range of companies — especially startups that may not yet have established credit histories — without requiring a personal guarantee.

That’s where Plaid comes in.

A better customer experience 

Prior to integrating Plaid, Brex struggled to provide all its customers with the option to connect their bank account for credit underwriting purposes. Those whose financial institutions weren’t supported had to instead gather bank statements every month—a cumbersome task for both the customer and the Brex team charged with their review. 

With Plaid, the experience is fast and effortless, both for the customer and for Brex. 

As Samy Megalli, Brex Data Operations Specialist, explained, “Plaid enables our customers to establish a stable connection with any bank in the United States, as well as a myriad of financial institutions abroad. This ensures a better experience for our customers while helping us scale our own business. It was a no-brainer.”


Dynamic credit, increased efficiency

A live bank connection provides real-time insights into a customer’s cash flow, allowing Brex to both underwrite new customers faster and dynamically update their credit lines as the customer’s business grows — all with minimal administrative intervention. Rather than relying on uploaded financial statements, which have a 24-hour SLA for data availability, Plaid enables Brex to immediately access the "Proof of Funds" necessary for underwriting. This not only accelerates credit approvals but also improves the customer application experience by ensuring Proof of Funds are verified before the underwriting process even begins.

Given that over 67% of Brex customers with a cash-based credit line have a Plaid-connected bank account, the impact on Brex’s operational efficiency is significant. “Plaid allows us to divert those resources away from crunching numbers and onto things that really matter,” continued Megalli.


Always iterating  

For Brex, working with Plaid has been a consistently smooth experience—one that elevates their own back office.  

“The relationship management team is a pleasure to work with,” said Megalli. “And the technical team is equal parts proactive and reactive when it comes to coordinating solutions. They’re always looking at ways to improve their product—and that means improving Brex’s systems and processes, too.”


Looking ahead

As Brex continues to grow and support more businesses with high-limit corporate cards, modern banking and high-yield treasury, as well as intuitive expense management software, the company sees Plaid as a critical partner in making that possible. In fact, Brex’s latest product updates include enhanced customization features that are grounded in the same principles behind the dynamic credit lines Brex offers that are made possible through Plaid's live bank connections.

Brex believes in helping customers spend smarter and move faster, and the speed of underwriting enabled by Plaid connections is a critical component of delivering on that promise.

As Megalli concluded: “The best is yet to come.”