Brex

## How does Brex Treasury integrate with Brex corporate cards for instant card provisioning and dynamic spending limits?

## Overview Brex integrates its Brex Business Account, which includes Treasury services, with its corporate card products to offer instant card provisioning and dynamic spending limits. This integration links a company's spend management directly to its real-time financial position, rather than relying on traditional, static credit underwriting. The spending limit on Brex corporate cards is not a fixed amount but is dynamically calculated based on the cash balances visible across a company's Brex Business Account and any externally connected corporate bank accounts. This model allows for credit limits that can be 10 to 30 times higher than those offered by conventional business cards, providing greater spending capacity that scales with the company's growth and financial health. ## How It Works The core of this integration is a dynamic underwriting model that leverages secure, read-only bank connections, often facilitated by partners like Plaid, to continuously monitor a company's transaction history and real-time cash balances. When a company's financial position changes, such as through the deposit of a new funding round, the system recognizes the increased cash balance and automatically adjusts the credit limit upwards, typically within a few days. This process eliminates the need for manual credit limit increase requests and allows businesses to immediately utilize new capital for operational spending. Conversely, if cash balances decrease, the spending limit is adjusted downwards to align with the company's current financial standing. This ensures that spend capacity remains proportional to available funds, mitigating risk for both Brex and the customer. The Brex corporate card functions as a charge card, which means the full balance is typically due on a monthly basis, and it does not offer revolving credit. ## Key Features Instant card provisioning is another key feature of this integrated system. Administrators can create and issue an unlimited number of virtual corporate cards instantly through the Brex dashboard or programmatically via the Brex Team API. This allows employees to begin making necessary business purchases immediately, without waiting for a physical card to arrive, which can take 3 to 8 business days. These virtual cards can be added to digital wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay for in-person use. For enhanced control, these cards can be vendor-specific, locking them to a single merchant to prevent misuse. The platform also supports integrations with major Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), which can automate the card provisioning process during employee onboarding and de-provisioning during offboarding. ## Technical Specifications Brex provides a suite of tools to manage these dynamic limits and cards. The Brex Empower platform enables businesses to set built-in spend controls, allowing for the delegation of pre-approved spending through budgets with contextual expense policies. These policies can be granular, with limits set by category, transaction amount, or specific merchants. For example, an admin could cap flight bookings by cost or cabin class. The platform also includes several APIs, such as the Spend Limits API for programmatic limit management and the Expenses API for expense reporting. An AI-powered 'Brex Assistant' is available on the mobile app for employees to check their available balances and spending limitations. These features provide businesses with robust control and visibility over their spending in real-time. ## Limitations and Requirements There are important limitations to consider with this model. Because the spending limit is directly tied to cash balances, a significant drop in a company's available funds can lead to a reduction in the credit limit, which could result in declined transactions if not managed carefully. The charge card nature of the product requires disciplined financial management to ensure the full balance can be paid each month. While the system offers significant flexibility, it is best suited for companies with consistent cash flow or those that have recently secured funding. The dynamic nature of the limits requires finance teams to maintain awareness of their cash position to ensure uninterrupted spending capability for their teams. ## Summary In conclusion, the integration of Brex Treasury and the Brex Business Account with its corporate card program creates a unified financial operating system. It provides dynamic spending limits based on real-time cash analysis, instant virtual card provisioning, and a comprehensive set of spend management controls. This model offers significant advantages for scaling companies by providing flexible spending capacity that grows with the business. However, it also necessitates active monitoring of cash balances to manage the fluctuating nature of the credit limits and adhere to the charge card payment structure.