We’re incredibly excited to announce Brex Cash!
Since we started Brex, my co-founder Henrique and I had much bigger plans than only corporate credit cards. Business bank accounts are a pain for virtually every company for a long time, and for the last 18 months we embarked on a journey to build a banking experience that, coupled with the Brex credit card, is 10x better than anything out there.
Alan Kay used to say that if you’re serious about software, you should make your own hardware. In fintech, I believe the equivalent analogy is: if you’re serious about financial services, you should build your own infrastructure. At Brex, we have a strong belief that great financial products innovate at the core, and not only at the UI layer. So instead of relying on existing banking systems to build Brex Cash, we took the approach of building our core systems from scratch, building directly on top of the payment rails (NACHA and FedWire). This level of autonomy with the technology stack enables us to do amazing things like instant onboarding, making funds available instantly, charging no fees on wires/ACH (given our more efficient cost structure), and deeply integrating with the Brex card. And at the UI layer, we packed all of this into a user experience that is minimal, polished and designed to save companies time and get them back to running their business.
We also wanted to make business banking better in all aspects - not only on software. We noticed our customers raised millions of dollars and kept the money parked in their checking accounts, earning no interest. A 10x better experience meant offering the highest yield on their money and, to achieve that, Brex Cash became not only a complex technical challenge, but also a financial/regulatory one. The way most fintechs offer banking services without having to be regulated as banks is by “reselling” another bank’s products and bolting a UI on top of the bank’s checking/savings account. But because traditional banks separate checking and savings accounts, customers earn a lower yield on their money as a whole. Instead, we chose a different structure: customers put their cash into Brex Treasury LLC, a registered broker-dealer affiliate of Brex Inc., that invests the cash in low-risk securities, such as U.S. Treasuries.
The reactions of our early Brex Cash customers have been overwhelmingly positive, and we believe we’re on the path to build the best bank account replacement, not only for startups but for any business in America. Personally, I’ve been dreaming about this product since I was 16 years old building my first company in Brazil, and I’m incredibly proud of the Brex team for their hard work to make this dream a reality :)
We’d love to hear your feedback!