Brex will soon provide corporate cards and expense management tools for Midwest regional Fifth Third Bank’s business clients, according to a deal announced Tuesday.
Fifth Third’s entire corporate card program will run on Brex’s embedded payments platform next year, in a partnership that will help clients “focus on strategy instead of spreadsheets,” according to Bridgit Chayt, Fifth Third’s head of commercial payments and treasury management.
Brex Embedded, which the fintech launched last year, will allow Cincinnati-based Fifth Third business clients to automate spend controls and will use artificial intelligence to handle receipts and accounting, eliminating much of the manual work that goes into closing the books each month, the companies announced.
“This partnership isn’t just about technology,” Chayt told Banking Dive. “It’s about redefining expectations for commercial banking.”
“Businesses have been asking for solutions that go beyond processing payments to actually help them operate smarter and scale faster. By combining Fifth Third’s financial strength with Brex’s AI-native platform, we’re delivering exactly that,” she said. “Our goal is simple: give clients intelligent tools that eliminate manual work, provide real-time insights, and create a seamless experience from Day One.”
Art Levy, Brex’s chief business officer, told Banking Dive the firm’s “special sauce” is that its artificial intelligence is embedded in its core payment infrastructure, rather than bolted on top of a legacy system. He said Brex spent seven years building its payments stack and then evolved it to be fully AI-native, thus allowing its agents to automate workflows from end to end.
“We have been able to build a system of agents that can engage with each other, handling key tasks like capturing receipts, matching transactions, enforcing spend policy, automating approvals and overall meaningfully accelerating month-end close,” he said.
Two facets of the program that Chayt sees as unique are real-time visibility and control.
“Clients gain instant insights into company spend and can implement dynamic controls to manage budgets proactively,” she said. “That level of transparency and agility is a game-changer for businesses operating in fast-moving markets.”
Levy said the Fifth Third partnership meaningfully expands Brex’s reach in the commercial segment, its largest target group, where many continue to use “outdated financial tools like Amex and Concur.”
The Fifth Third-Brex partnership is in its pilot stage in one regional market and two corporate card verticals. Chayt said it would expand across all commercial banking segments next year.
