Many, many MilesTalkers opened Brex accounts last year when there was an offer for 110,000 Brex points (transferable to several airlines or you can cash out at 1 cent per point). Many of these were actual businesses and many of these have been using their accounts.
I personally have enjoyed using my Brex account for some simple money management / ACH payments.
But yesterday just about all of us were surprised to get an email that read as follows:
Subject: [Action required] Your Brex account is closing
We want to let you know that as of August 15, 2022, Brex will no longer be able to offer you our services due to a change in how we determine account eligibility. Brex regularly reviews its services, and due to a change in company strategy, we do not believe we will be able to provide a great level of service for your business moving forward. We’re sorry that this transition may create an extra burden for you and our team is here to help you work through the account closure over the next several weeks.
Brex has partnered with Bluevine to offer you an alternative option. Learn more and apply for an account here. You can also reach out to Bluevine at [email protected].
Actions you need to take:
Proactively close your account through your Brex dashboard.
Withdraw any funds in your account before August 15, 2022, by following these steps.
Update any outstanding instructions or recurring payments that use your Brex account details.
Provide new and updated bank instructions to your vendors and other payment recipients.
Redeem any available rewards points prior to your account closure.
If you do not take any action before August 15, 2022, your account will be automatically closed, and we will hold your funds until you request the return of your funds or the funds are escheated, as required by law.
You can also find a list of FAQs here.
We are grateful for the opportunity to have supported your business, and wish you all the best going forward.
The Brex Team
There has been a ton of speculation of who and why we are getting the boot, albeit with 2 months time to sort out what we’ll do with the funds.
At first I thought it was that maybe I didn’t use the account enough, have a large enough balance (it was low 5 figures), or some other reason.
Lots of people speculated it was only single member LLCs closed (not true) or those with low balances (not true – we had a group member state they had an 8-figure Brex balance).
What really happened is that Brex has decided to change focus and offer services, going forward, only to tech startups. This is further defined as a funded tech startup. i.e. they only want big, growing tech companies as clients.
You can read for yourself directly from the founder of Brex.
🧵 Yesterday we made the difficult decision to stop serving traditional small businesses at @brexHQ.
Brex remains deeply committed to serving startups, so let me explain how we got to this (painful) decision, and why it allows us to serve startups even better.
— Pedro Franceschi (@pedroh96) June 17, 2022
If you have accumulated Brex points, you are no doubt wondering how best to cash out (and I plan to do so within the next few days “just in case” – although I also need to move my money out of the account). The Brex transfer partners are, frankly, a bit limited but of the bunch I’d pick Avianca or Air France (remember that Frequent Miler discovered that as long as you never credit a flight to Air France, your miles won’t expire as long as you transfer some miles within 24 months of the last earn). Cathay Pacific could also work for long haul flights on oneworld but I worry about “parking” miles there as they aren’t in very good shape financially.
You could also simply take the cash…..
What do you plan to do?
Thoughts?
Let me know below in the comments, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group. And don't forget to follow me on Instagram for all sorts of tips on miles, points, credit cards, and travel.
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New to all of this? My “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available on Amazon and at major booksellers.
You know, there is a famous Warren Buffett quote:
“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
Hi, Dave. I don’t have any specific answer, but for some reason mine is one of the (seemingly) few accounts to survive this cull. Like most other folks I opened the account when they were running the 110K promo. Have no idea if any of this is significant but sharing some DPs about how I use Brex:
(1) My company is about 10 years old and structured as an S-corp. We have no VC startup funding as we’re not a startup. Our industry is a specialized form of IT-business consulting.
(2) I’ve have some funds parked with them for the past couple months because I really like how they do wire transfers. The amounts aren’t crazy, have never been more than mid 5-figures. Prior to these last 2 months I also used them for wire transfers but have never had funds parked for more than 48 hours (transfer money to Brex, immediately send a wire to a vendor).
(3) After receiving the SUB I’ve never used my card again. The card itself isn’t bad from a rewards POV but I use Quicken for my accounting software and they don’t interface with that and manual bookkeeping is too much of a hassle. As a result I have not accumulated any points after the SUB.
(4) Brex had contacted me several times to do surveys for them on how they can improve. I always did the surveys. Even got some Amazon GCs out of it for my trouble 🙂
(5) Didn’t do the PayPal deal. Or rather: I tried, something didn’t track, and I was too lazy to contact anyone at Brex to fight for this.
(6) I signed up for AWS through Brex’s “marketplace” offer
On June 7th Brex contacted me that my routing and account number has changed and I had to update all external accounts that transfer to Brex by June 30th. The old routing number was 211075086 (LendingClub Bank National Association) and the new one is 121145349 (Column National Association). I’m guessing the folks that got the cancellation notification didn’t get this same email?
Oh and also I don’t have cards or accounts for any of my employees and don’t use their expense management features.
That is interesting. My Brex goes through a bank called Radius. It does sound like they classified you differently!
Hi Vlad,
Any luck with transferring your Brex points out? Transfers to KrisFlyer on the 17th, have done transfers plenty of times in the past and they’ve always been fairly instant. Brex account still shows them as pending with them telling me it could be up to 5 days. Just curious if you’d had any luck.
Thanks!
Hey Shawn. Did yours post? I actually just did Brex to SQ and it’s already over 24 hours still pending.
BREX just canceled our account for no reason, DO NOT USE BREX, ITS A TOTAL JOKE OF A BANK. WARNING.
Same here, 29th September. ” Based on a review of recent activity”(No Activity except parked funds) on your account, Brex is unable to continue offering accounts. All associated cards and cash accounts been closed. They are a real Joke.