Brex announced Wednesday that the Brex Empower platform is gaining new global capabilities as well as a new partnership with Deel, a payroll and compliance provider. Beginning Wednesday, Brex Empower clients can manage the spending of global employees in over 100 countries.

Global companies can now take advantage of secure employee spending, budget creation in local currency, and same-day global reimbursements. The spending protections include PIN protection and 3D Secure, which asks spenders to complete an additional verification step.

Same-day global reimbursements will be in the local currency of the employee. The transactions will be shown in real-time, and they will be reviewed and approved by finance teams. The finance teams can see employee's card, cash, and reimbursement transactions in the currency they were made, plus the exchange rate that was used.

"Global is a journey. It's not something that we're done with. Global is something that we need to keep doing for a long time. There's a lot more capabilities as you go to different countries that need to be built and we're committed to building them over the next few months and years," Henrique Dubugras, founder and co-CEO of Brex, toldZDNet.

Brex Empower is an evolving platform that will grow with new features as time goes on. For now, it includes a spending management tool. But Brex plans to introduce other products into the platform that deal with payroll, banking access, and travel, among others. The platform aims to make business processes faster and easier, saving time for both leadership and employees.

For example, two new features coming to Brex Empower in the coming months are the global collection and locally issued Brex cards. The global collection will enable companies with subsidiaries in other countries to use those companies to pay their Brex bill in that country. Locally issued cards mean Brex will issue credit cards for the country that the employee is living in. So, rather than using an American card in Japan, Brex will issue a Japanese card for that employee to make transactions even easier.

"Empower is almost like a super power. If a company implements Brex Empower, they move faster," Dubugras said. "You can track in real-time how much people are spending according to a budget: If they're going over, why they are going over, and create this culture of financial discipline by increasing the accountability of leaders by giving them a lot of visibility into what's happening."

Recommends

The best online business bank accounts

It requires careful consideration to find the right account for you.

Read now

In addition, Brex Empower aims to make it easier for employees to do the right thing. Dubugras said that a lot of the time, employees may not be aware of their company's spending policy, what they can spend on, or what they can't. So Brex Empower looks to simplify the spending process for a company's employees. "We assume that most people are trying to do the right thing and we make it easy for them to do that," he said.

The new partnership with Deel will enable Brex Empower to support fast-growing companies with international payroll, benefits, taxes, and compliance. 

"We love how they're building their platform to make it easy for companies to hire internationally, spend globally, and operate faster everywhere. We're excited to integrate into the Brex system to enable companies to instantly move funds for faster payroll," Alex Bouaziz, CEO of Deel, said in the press release. 

A recent study by Deel found that the growth rate of hiring internationally grew by over 200% in every major global region in the second half of 2021. Additionally, Brex said the number of Brex users based outside of the US quadrupled in 2021 compared to 2020.

Finance

Inflation is about to change grocery shopping for goodThe 5 best high-yield savings accounts: Not your standard savingsHow AI is making Gen Z the most financially sophisticated generationThe 5 best credit cards you can (and should) keep foreverWant a job in finance? Here are your options

• Inflation is about to change grocery shopping for good
• The 5 best high-yield savings accounts: Not your standard savings
• How AI is making Gen Z the most financially sophisticated generation
• The 5 best credit cards you can (and should) keep forever
• Want a job in finance? Here are your options