Brex Shutting Down Some Accounts

Update: Brex is also closing other accounts which are not dormant. I received this notification for my business account which regularly has more than $5K monthly transactions spread out over 5 employee cards, and a balance of at least $10K. Brex says this is “due to a change in how we determine account eligibility”. Brex says it regularly reviews its services, and due to a change in company strategy, it will not be able to provide a great level of service for some businesses with Brex accounts. Brex is apparently dropping tens of thousands of small business customers to focus on bigger venture-backed clients. The company is focusing on clients who have secured institutional backing of any kind, including from accelerator programs, angel investors or Web 3.0 tokens, he said. They are also keeping traditional companies that Brex deems mid-market in size, which have “more financial history so we can underwrite them for our credit card,” co-founder Henrique Dubugras said. The other co-founder, Pedro Franceschi, also explained the change in strategy on Twitter.

Brex is a credit card and a cash management platform for businesses. It quickly became popular thanks to some big bonuses offered during the last few years. You can still get a $1,100 signup bonus if you apply for Brex now, but the spending requirement is higher. Brex also offered a huge bonus of $1,000 for PayPal Merchant Processing. So it’s fair to say that many readers might have this account and possibly still have unused rewards.

If you are one of those people who hasn’t cash out Brex points, or transferred them to travel partners, then you should do so as soon as possible if you’re not actively using your Brex account. Doctor of Credit reports that Brex has sent out emails warning some users that their accounts will be closed due to dormancy. Brex notes that you can make some transactions and possibly keep the account. But that will still require a further review to decide if your transactions are enough to keep the account open. No specific amounts or number of transactions were provided.

If you’d like to keep your accounts, please start making transactions again within the next 30 days. We will then conduct an internal review to make a determination about account closure.

I didn’t receive this email myself. I have had a Brex account for over two years now, but I use the card often and even the cash management account. I found it to be very useful a small business that has several employees as they can all have own separate sub-accounts and check their own spending and create virtual card numbers. Plus the card has good earning rates such as up to 8x on rideshares, 5x on flights and hotels booked through Brex Travel 4x on dining. And there’s no annual fee. You can read more about the card here. 

Using Rewards

If you have Brex rewards that you need to use before your account is closed, you can redeem them for cash back, Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH), or transfer to airline partners. Eligible partners include:

• Aeromexico Club Premier
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue
• Avianca Lifemiles
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
• Emirates Skywards (Coming soon!)
• JetBlue TrueBlue
• Qantas Frequent Flyer
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer