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Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

brex.com

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Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#211

Post by JCharante »

jnwatson wrote: post #74
bklyn11201 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Zelle: all of the big banks have it. Credit unions are slower to adopt. 2. Mobile apps: big bank mobile apps are pretty great these days. 3. Credit cards: Bank of America rebates 2.625% for top customers. 4. Bill pay: the big bank bill pay integrations with vendors and ebills is better

Zelle should be avoided for almost every transaction. There is no fraud protection.

So it's as good as cash?

If I sell my old TV in the parking lot of a Walmart, I don't want somebody to charge back the transaction.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#212

Post by eins1234 »

friendzis wrote: post #192
eins1234 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's great to maintain good enough unit economics to not have to pull stunts like this one, it's not necessarily always a plus from a customer perspective. Comparing Mercury and Brex/Ramp specifically, Mercury is notably missing rewards on transactions, while Ramp has unlimited 1.5% cashback, and Brex has a bunch of multipliers ranging from 7x to 1x points. If I have access to all of the options above, it would…

> The model works, given the right set of customers and credit risk profiles. Sooo... The model only works if you carefully cherry pick the customers?

Yes exactly. That's exactly how lending works.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#213

Post by wsdan »

This isn’t the first time doing this - at the start of the pandemic they also closed the accounts of travel and hospitality businesses en masse. They tried to win us back once the vaccine was out and business was booming but we’d lost any trust in their reliability by then.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#214

Post by gnfargbl »

parkaboy wrote: post #167
cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yuck. Brex comes across as risky, mercurial, and snobby rather than useful, professional, and reliable. Does anyone else know about or use Silicon Valley Bank? How do they compare to Mercury?

We used SVB at my previous startup. Somewhat ironically, their UX is SUPER dated and a bit kludgy (been a year since I've checked, though) and their fees are high, BUT they're high touch and good to be in with strategically (especially when it comes to debt financing). I don't know if I'd suggest them early on when bootstrapped, but definitely worth a gander once larger or VC-backed. Mercury's UX is sexy AF and enjoy…

SVB's older UI is/was extremely dated, but their more recent SVB Go brand (connect.svb.com) is a huge step up.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#215

Post by helsinkiandrew »

saagarjha wrote: post #176

The title of this page says “why” but there is exactly zero on this page which explains why. There’s half of one sentence that introduces what (“we are less suited to meet the needs of smaller customers”) but even that is dressed up to the max. This is a poster child in what everyone hates about corporate communication: entirely opaque, misleading word salad. Do better.

I think "we are less suited to meet the needs of smaller customers" can be read as "smaller customers cost too much/aren't profitable enough/take up too much resources, so we're concentrating on larger ones".

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#216

Post by Cymen »

cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #162
parkaboy wrote: post #147

Not surprised by any of this. Feels like it comes from the top, culturally. I had a terrible experience "onboarding" with Brex last year. They actually "approved" my bootstrapped startup and sent me a physical card only to rescind it a shortly thereafter, because--even though we met the funding minimum--it wasn't "professionally invested" on further review. Bootstrapping apparently required a $1MM minimum. Here's wha…

Yuck. Brex comes across as risky, mercurial, and snobby rather than useful, professional, and reliable. Does anyone else know about or use Silicon Valley Bank? How do they compare to Mercury?

If you deposit checks, make sure SVB doesn't make it too much of a hassle. I don't know why but a prior employer banks at SVB and they have a real hard time getting my COBRA checks deposited. Sometimes, I'll have 4-5 months of COBRA checks deposited at once. I have a business account with plain old Chase and as long as the funds are in USD, I can deposit via a mobile app. Nobody really wants to deal with checks of course but if you do have to...

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#217

Post by reverseprefs »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #180
reverseprefs wrote: post #156

Why Brex is no longer qualified to be our bank: We’ve put $millions through Brex cash/cards and will almost certainly leave after reading this. This doesn’t affect us (I think?) but that they’d do something like this in this way is a breach of trust that signals bigger problems down the line. What is “Empower” and why would I believe they won’t sunset the current Brex offering to push some upmarket sales nonsense on…

Is it a bank, though? I don't know Brex but looking around their website they seem to be a fintech company but not a bank (they don't seem to have a licence)

Brex cash is functionally a bank account. Department-specific Brex cards are useful and it integrated well.

Our “real” bank has such a clunky interface that we started using Brex cash because it was a little easier, and over time drifted more to that account.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#218

Post by gnfargbl »

christoph wrote: post #121
United857 wrote: post #44

So can we call this... Brexit?

I came here to say this... maybe consider a rebrand/rename? I don't suggest that lightly, but their name has some serious negative (for some people) connotations (not for me... it's politics, which I frankly just don't care about, life is too short). I instantly assumed their business was tied to some political allegiance with EU/Brexit finance/payments, which alone made me almost not click into the article. I read t…

For HN'ers outside the UK who might be put off by the Godwin above: People here really do have strong opinions about Brexit, one way or another. It has been a central part of the news for many years now, and it has increasingly real implications for this country's future. I (also) don't want to delve into the political arguments, but to give you an idea of what's at stake, a Brexit-induced restart of the Troubles in NI is now looking more likely than it has for decades.

The point I'm trying to make here is that it's just not a topic that you can have a casual opinion on. Against that backdrop, using the term as a whimsical joke feels so profoundly distasteful that a lot of people here would probably ignore the business entirely.

Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?

#220

Post by mytailorisrich »

reverseprefs wrote: post #217
mytailorisrich wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a bank, though? I don't know Brex but looking around their website they seem to be a fintech company but not a bank (they don't seem to have a licence)

Brex cash is functionally a bank account. Department-specific Brex cards are useful and it integrated well. Our “real” bank has such a clunky interface that we started using Brex cash because it was a little easier, and over time drifted more to that account.

A bank is a licenced and highly regulated company. This is important, especially when things go wrong...
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