A new tech startup is looking to change the financial landscape by introducing a new credit card product specifically for startups.
Backed by Paypal co-founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin and other major figures in the technology and financial worlds, the fledgling fintech startup Brex has announced that $57 million in funding has been raised to provide a credit card aimed at startups to acquire funding for their projects.
The idea came about when Henrique Duburgas and Pedro Franceschi were inside Y Combinator with their augmented reality startup. They saw the struggles of their batch mates in acquiring even the most basic corporate credit cards. It didn’t even matter that every Y Combinator company had received at least $120,000 in funding, the accelerator’s standard deal of admission.
“We couldn’t get a corporate credit card – one of our YC batch mates could either,” says the 22-year-old CEO Dubugras. “It was crazy… We all had $120,000 in the bank. Why couldn’t we get a credit card?”
The company set out to reimagine the corporate credit card, providing credit cards startups can use without having to personally guarantee that card or wade through complex processes to finally get a charge card.
“We want to be the best corporate credit card for startups,” Dubugras said. “We don’t require a personal guarantee or deposit, and we can give people a credit limit that’s as much as ten times higher. We can get you a virtual credit card in literally 5 minutes, versus traditional banks, in which you’d have to personally guarantee the card and get a low limit and it takes weeks to approve.”
A number of other features are also featured on the card, such as the ability to capture receipts with your phone and match them to your statement, and it integrates with popular accounting software such as Expensify, QuickBooks, Xero, and NetSuite.
The company has signed up most of the startups in its Y Combinator class as well as startups in the subsequent batches. They have also lander some larger clients, including lending startups SoFi and Affirm (founded by Brex backer Levchin), and genetic testing startup Color Genomics.