Why we rebuilt banking for modern business

Traditional business banking wasn’t built for the speed or complexity expected by modern companies. Most banking platforms are layered on top of legacy infrastructure, and present a challenge to customers who want to know what is actually happening with their funds.

At Brex, we’ve made deliberate choices to build the infrastructure ourselves. We’ve designed every component around security, speed, and scalability, and partnered with best-in-class custodians to deliver a reliable experience. That’s how we’ve earned the trust of our customers—by building a system that stands up to scrutiny.

What does banking look like at Brex?

Checking: A modern account built on modern rails

For our checking accounts, deposits are held with our partner bank, Column N.A., Member FDIC., one of the most forward-thinking banks in the U.S. and an FDIC-insured institution. Brex itself is not a bank and does not hold customer deposits on its balance sheet or use them to fund loans.

Instead, Brex facilitates your payments and fund movements, but we never repurpose deposits for our own use. Column, like most banks, may use deposits in the ordinary course of banking activities, but your money remains available to you.

By partnering directly with Column N.A., we’ve built checking account access that delivers the speed needed for startups with the performance and reliability of enterprise banking. Our payments are fast, global, and fully integrated into Brex’s platform, so your cash, cards, controls, and data all work together in real time.

Treasury: Direct access to higher returns

When we set out to build our treasury product, we didn’t want to just plug into someone else’s system. We wanted to remove unnecessary layers. That's why we established a registered broker-dealer and integrated directly with BNY Mellon Dreyfus.

The result? Direct access to a highly liquid U.S. government money market fund without intermediaries or wrappers. With fewer middlemen taking a cut, you get faster access to your funds and clearer pricing—with more of the yield passed directly back to you.

Here’s how it works in practice:

• Your money = your shares. When you invest in Brex Treasury, you’re not just holding cash at Brex. You’re buying shares of a regulated U.S. government money market fund* (DGVXX). Those shares belong to you, not to Brex.
• Kept separate from Brex. By law, your assets are held separately from Brex’s own funds, which means we cannot use or co-mingle them—they remain yours and stay protected.
• Added protection with SIPC. Brex Treasury is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). SIPC provides up to $500K of protection (including $250K for cash) if a broker-dealer fails, working to recover and transfer your shares to another provider so they remain accessible to you.

Vault: Safeguard your funds with expanded FDIC insurance

With Vault, we help businesses go beyond the standard $250K by programmatically sweeping funds across a network of partner banks.This gives you access to up to $6 million in coverage included automatically. Funds remain liquid and visible in your Brex dashboard, so you get safety without sacrificing control.

Final thought

Anyone can put a modern interface on legacy infrastructure. Building the foundation is harder. Our team came from inside traditional banking, where we saw the weaknesses, understood the constraints, and knew what needed to be rebuilt.

That's why Brex delivers banking that actually works for ambitious companies. We're not just better than the alternatives—we're for businesses that refuse to compromise between speed and control.