Hey. Engineer at rebank (YC W19) here.
You should definitely check us out https://www.rebanknow.com/ if you're looking for an alternative. We cater specifically for small businesses and we're ready to help you switch over.
Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
231–240 of 350 posts
Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
Due to the anti money laundering, sanctions etc. customers are also a risk for financial institutions. Small companies won't bring much revenue so banks are sometimes not very eager to onboard them.
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Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#233The 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.
With such a vague explanation, my cynical side kicks in and fills in, "You're too poor, bye." Maybe there's a better reason, but they don't even try to explain.
You are though. There are lots of businesses (B2B) that won’t deal with you or put up with you. Ask anyone who has run a retail business and they’ll tell you how much pain in the ass B2C businesses are. You are poor(relatively) and not worth doing business with sometimes. That’s fine and absolutely ok.
Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#234Brex founder here. We've made the difficult decision to no longer offer services to the small business market. Back in April we launched Empower, and we decided to put the full weight of Brex towards building the best global payments platform for tech startups and larger companies. With that, we realized we couldn't do a great job serving the small business community at the same time. This has been an incredibly diff…
What language is this, marketing? I can't be the only one who finds these heavily sugarcoated weasel words annoying.
You're not the only one. But I find it very sad that so many people don't mind such PR-ese non-apologies and damage control
Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#235[deleted]
Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#236Can someone summarize what a "fintech" company like Brex or Mercury provides that a bank or credit union does not?
Well, the theory is that you use technology to provide the same services that a traditional bank does, but you do it better because banks have notoriously shit systems.
The practice is often that you use technology to provide a half-arsed subset of the services that a traditional bank does, but you don't have a risk department so when there's a downturn in the market it turns out you're providing services to all the people a traditional bank didn't want to deal with for good reason.
Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#237The 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.
It’s not you, it’s me, now gtfo.
Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
Due to the anti money laundering, sanctions etc. customers are also a risk for financial institutions. Small companies won't bring much revenue so banks are sometimes not very eager to onboard them.
AML laws tend to scale with the size of the customer.
That's why you can put a few hundred dollars in a PayPal account before submitting your government ID for verification.
It's also why things like pay as you go SIM cards (which typically don't check your ID) normally have a balance limited to $100 or so.
Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s deliberate. The choices are 1) say something true that will make you look bad, 2) say something untrue that might bite you in the ass later, and 3) write ambiguous waffle that explains nothing and commits you to nothing. PR and legal will tell you to choose 3 every time.
for those that didn't click, pasting verbatim > Brex is constantly evolving our business, and after changes to our strategy, we are less suited to meet the needs of smaller customers. The following sections will provide you with more context for your next steps. terrible communication. it's we need ______ so you should deal with _____. that is not empathy
I can tell you that small clients definitely have no trace of empathy. They have needs, period. I think it's pretty ok to make a clean break and say "we are less suited to meet the needs of smaller customers" because, yes, you actually need a different kind of company to do that. They're not that (anymore), and they're being transparent about it.
Re: Why am I no longer qualified to be a Brex customer?
#240Remember Vimeo? They started as an alternative to Youtube, letting anybody upload. Then they decided to dump their small users and go for large ones. Vimeo is publicly held, so we can see how this worked out.[1] Price one year ago, at the peak, $49. Price today, $6.54. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/stockdetails/fi-c26vvh?ocid=...
> Then they decided to dump their small users and go for large ones
If they didn't, they'd stay "shitty youtube" and lose. They decided to differentiate themselves to have a chance at finding their target market.