As of August 2023, Brex is not currently available in Australia.

In this guide, we provide a quick overview of what Brex does, we run through the major advantages on offer, and we look at viable Brex substitutes which can be accessed by Australian businesses today.

Brex supplies one of the most comprehensive, all-in-one spend management platforms in the world. The primary drawback for our readers is that it is simply not yet available in many countries like Australia and New Zealand. 

Functionality of the Brex platform includes:

Best Brex Alternatives in Australia:

Founded in 2020, Cape is an Australian fintech firm catering to SMEs. Their corporate card solution emphasizes functionality, offering expense management tools and cloud accounting integrations. The platform can issue both physical and virtual cards. Using its API, ledgers are auto-populated from receipts and memos, and it integrates seamlessly with various accounting software. International transactions come without added fees.

Cape Card: Software & Business Cards

Functions Include:

• Total Expense Management from Submission to Reporting
• Market-Leading Spend Insights 
• Easy Policy Management
• Physical & Virtual Corporate Cards 
• Most crossover functionality to Brex available

In Detail: What is Brex?

Launched in 2017, Brex is a San Francisco-headquartered fintech offering a fully unified global spend platform. This includes expense management software, travel booking, corporate credit cards and a business account. 

Over 200,000 businesses use Brex to manage their finances. Typical customers include startups, fast-growth companies, and ecommerce brands. The Brex solution helps business owners, finance teams and staff on the ground manage company spend easily and efficiently.

The original focus of the firm was on corporate cards and Brex’s unique credit model meant it was more flexible to firms with a limited operating history. However, a company’s overall Brex card limit is largely defined by the available cash in their bank account, meaning it operates more akin to a company debit card. Brex generally requires its customers to maintain a cash balance of at least $25,000 to maintain any credit limit. Specific Brex card limits can then be assigned to individual users, so long as they fall within the total permitted allowance.

After a successful rollout of the Brex credit card, the fintech launched its spend management system and acquired the firm Pry Financials, a 10-person software platform with tools for budgeting, bookkeeping and forecasting, taking Brex’s spend management and reporting system to a new level.

The Brex card and expense management platform combined is known as Brex Empower.

Over recent years, Brex has grown its international footprint and is available in a wide number of locations outside the US, including: Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Africa, the Philippines, 36 European countries (including the UK) and more. However, Australia is still a territory where Brex is unavailable.

Benefits of Brex

Brex provides a variety of essential tools for enterprises, including seamless integration with accounting software, efficient expense handling, and an advanced reporting system to see company-wide spend in one place. 

Its Brex cards product allows for the creation of physical and vendor-specific virtual credit cards, meaning businesses can allocate unique cards for each vendor. Consequently, if one card faces security issues, the rest remain unaffected. What’s more, there’s no ceiling on how many Brex Cards a business can obtain – whether one or thousands of Brex cards are required, it’s no issue.

Its receipt scanning technology makes it easy for employees to snap a picture of their bills, submit them to Brex, which then aligns and integrates this data on their system. 

Brex Empower facilitates effortless monitoring of employee, supplier, and miscellaneous costs. Its advanced reporting software also aids in pinpointing over expenditure, helping firms to save extensive sums in the long run.

Brex Alternatives in Australia

By cross-referencing their features with Brex, analysing customer reviews and exploring the main advantages they bring to businesses, we’ve narrowed down to two Brex competitors that are the closest like-for-like companies currently accessible in Australia.

1) Cape

Functionality of the Cape platform includes:

Established in 2020, Cape is a pioneering Aussie fintech offering an all-in-one expense management system that includes spend management software, budgeting tools and corporate cards. With its unique approach to pricing, businesses pay a low fixed fee instead of an interest rate. Plans start at $8.99 a month and credit limits are accessible up to $500,000, netting it the #1 spot on our list of Australia’s best business cards.

Cape does not provide a ‘business bank account’ in a true sense but you can manage your employee card spend through an easy-to-use online platform and use your Cape card details to pay suppliers online or physically in-store (basically wherever card is accepted). The fact Cape charges zero FX fees, and does not add an FX spread over and above that applied by Mastercard, actually makes it a much better solution for making payments overseas, when compared to a bank transfer. It’s ideal for paying overseas supplies or SaaS subscriptions, which are often billed in USD.

We think its approach to how it applies a credit limit is actually preferable too. It takes out a risk assessment of your business and provides a genuine fixed credit line, rather a variable limit which fluctuates with the cash in your account.

Cape’s expense management software simplifies financial tasks by auto-populating books from receipts and it supports seamless integration with various accounting software, including Xero, Quickbooks, MYOB and more.

Being Australian-founded, the company offers local customer support and local billing.

One area Cape doesn’t yet cover is travel booking. Its zero FX fees make it a very attractive payment option, but Cape offers no online booking portal to compare and manage hotel or flight bookings.

To apply with Cape, businesses are required to meet the following criteria:

✔️ Aus Pty Ltd company 

✔️ Min $75k turnover 

✔️ In business for 12+ months 

✔️ Minimum 500 Equifax score

Apply Now

2) Expensify

Functionality of the Expensify platform includes:

Expensify is a USA-headquartered expense management and employee card provider, but they are available to Australian businesses.

They actually have quite a large crossover of functionality with Brex. Their receipt scanning software makes it easy to report expenses and the system is designed to easily manage the whole expense process. They have a travel solution but booking is all done via an online concierge, rather than empowering users to book their own trips. 

Expensify also calculates your available credit limit in the same manner as Brex. Things like your history as a customer and the cash in your account will influence the credit limit you’re granted. However, that means your limit will also fluctuate each day and likely be settled daily. Again, making it much more akin to a debit card.

One thing to watch out for is Expensify’s card billing only operating in USD, GBP or EUR. No FX fees are added, but with each item on your statement being billed in another currency, you’ll be losing a small amount to Visa on the currency exchange of each transaction.

Expensify is perhaps the most similar offering to Brex, but it’s still fine-tuned for US customers. We think Cape is still just about the best option in Australia.

In Summary: No Brex in Australia

As things stand, the renowned all-in-one spend management platform Brex, is not accessible to businesses in Australia. Brex offers an impressive suite of financial tools, and there is not one single provider in Australia which offers the same breadth of solutions. For Australian businesses seeking similar functionality, two noteworthy alternatives stand out: Cape and Expensify.

Cape, an Australian-born fintech, is particularly notable for its transparent credit limit approach and integration with popular accounting software. Expensify, on the other hand, offers a range of services comparable to Brex but is better tailored for US customers. Conclusively, for businesses in Australia, Cape emerges as the front-runner in providing a Brex-like experience.