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

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

#281

Post by ncallaway »

matkoniecz wrote: post #228
ncallaway wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a law for this. The EU as an open banking API law, that requires banks to make this data available electronically over an API. The US needs an open banking law. This should not be an optional feature for banks to offer. It should be an absolute requirement. I think it's insane to enter your credentials into Plaid. Almost every banking agreement I've ever seen disclaims liability if your account is bre…

> if you share your password with Plaid, and Plaid is breached, and someone uses your banking credentials to drain your account, I think a bank could wash their hands of it and walk away in that situation. is "Plaid is breached" necessary? Or is it enough for bank to be aware that you used Plaid?

I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer, just a concerned bank customer that read my TOS.

My guess would be that your bank account being compromised would need to flow in some way from you sharing your password. But, it might be a matter of “who has the resources to make a claim in court”, which could be a challenge for most people if they just lost their bank account (hell, it would be hard for most people even with access to their savings)

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

#283

Post by tzs »

pedrofranceschi wrote: post #10

Brex 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…

> 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.

The "larger companies" part is surprising to me. I would have expected that larger companies have already figured out good ways to handle global payments. Global commerce by large companies has been common for decades and so I'd expect there would be large, efficient, well established services supporting that.

It is smaller companies being able to participate in global commerce that is still fairly new, and I'd expect that many of the older global payment services that served the larger company's global payment needs aren't designed to scale down for smaller customers.

Thus I'd expect that global payments for smaller companies is where the opportunity lies.

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

#284

Post by b33pr »

pedrofranceschi wrote: post #10

Brex 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…

As a startup CEO that uses Brex and hasn’t been kicked off I have to say that I’m strongly considering self-evicting. What a shitty way to handle this.

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

#285

Post by blagie »

pedrofranceschi wrote: post #10

Brex 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…

Brex non-customer here.

1) If I were doing due diligence on a vendor, and ran across something like this, I wouldn't buy from them. It's unlikely to come up (I've never done due diligence on a CEO), but if I learned a CEO had pulled a stunt like this, I wouldn't buy from a new company.

2) Actions like this bias my judgements to the entire buy vs. build decision, and the SaaS space. My experience is that each time a service provider pulls something like this, the cost is higher than any net benefit from having worked with that provider.

There are exceptions. There are vendors with long track-records of stability. I happily use AWS, and would happily use Azure. But I don't do business with Google because of a history of stunts like this (several affecting me), and I avoid small startups for anything business-critical for the same reason.

In finance, stability is especially key.

In the same way as firing employees impacts the morale of existing and potential employees, firing customers does the same.

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

#286

Post by ncallaway »

nemothekid wrote: post #115
ncallaway wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a law for this. The EU as an open banking API law, that requires banks to make this data available electronically over an API. The US needs an open banking law. This should not be an optional feature for banks to offer. It should be an absolute requirement. I think it's insane to enter your credentials into Plaid. Almost every banking agreement I've ever seen disclaims liability if your account is bre…

Plaid is almost 10 years old and I think there are probably several verbatim comments on HN since the introduction of Plaid. Unfortunately I don't think we will ever see a such a law; the landscape has changed from 10 years ago and: 1. Plaid has been pretty much been blessed by the largest player in the space (the , now blocked, acquisition from Visa). 2. The banks are glad to outsource development of banking apis to…

Oh, yes, I would absolutely never use Plaid, or any service that requires it in the meantime.

But, there are many services that should exist, that could be safely used, if such an API mandate existed.

I actually think it’s a matter of time. Eventually the current state of affairs will lead to a crisis. Someone operating like Plaid (a centralized nexus of banking passwords) will be breached, funds will be drained, and banks will shrug.

At that point, the API law becomes much more likely. Banking regulations have a way of moving very slowly until a crisis erupts.

Another path is, once most of the bigger banks develop their own APIs, they will probably push for the regulation as a path to making it harder for smaller banks to compete.

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

#287

Post by tnjm »

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…

Indeed, Mercury has been phenomenal for us too. It's painful to use other banks now. How they've executed so quickly and competently in a tricky space is quite something to watch.

But the thought of them pulling a Brex-like move might now keep me awake at night... hopefully they would just add a monthly fee on before reaching that point.

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

#288

Post by entwife »

TylerE wrote: post #59
csomar wrote: post #38

So customers have less than 2 months to find new banking partners, migrate their data, inform their partners about banking changes, etc... This is one reason why I'm avoiding all fintech/startup/neo banks in the future. My most solid experience was with a top 5 US bank. They have a shitty customer service and a plethora of offers; but my direct deposits go faster, I don't get pestered over 5 figures amount going in/o…

Any typical user choosing a big corporate bank over a credit union for a personal account is insane.

I've had several Credit Union accounts across different states. They vary in quality and services.

One has great internet banking, remote check deposit, Zelle, and I can always talk to a real human on the phone when I need to. (Bonus: hearing my hometown accent). Nearly every financial product I need is there. And, I trust them, with cause.

My other CUs have fewer services and would not function as primary banks.

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

#289

Post by redisman »

blitzar wrote: post #185
pedrofranceschi wrote: post #10

Brex 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…

Why Brex? [0] > Brex makes it easy for founders, finance teams, and employees to spend smart, grow fast, and enjoy the ride. Maybe you should pivot your (customer) marketing material as well as your pitch deck. [0] https://www.brex.com/product/

They were marketing hard at one of the coworking spaces I was at which was full of tiny companies that didn’t make Much revenue . Couldn’t they figure out the math doesn’t work out prior to doing all this work and then backtracking ?

I’m guessing they were just chasing vanity metrics for a funding round

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

#290

Post by mbesto »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #278
mbesto wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The policy cited here is more about no longer being a good fit for "traditional" small businesses. Of which you, nor anyone else here, can clearly define. Hilarious, indeed.

They specifically said "funded".

What does "funded" mean? If my mom gives me $10k is that funded? If an investment firm gives me $5M, is that "funded"? And, and...
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