Brex Adds Travel Booking Using Spotnana Technology

Financial services and technology company Brex is launching a new travel booking service, built in partnership with Spotnana, on its Empower platform, the company announced.

The booking element will make Empower, which Brex launched last year, a “true all-in-one T&E solution” alongside its current corporate card and expense capabilities, Brex cofounder and co-CEO Henrique Dubugras said. It is built on top of Spotnana’s cloud-based booking platform, using its APIs and infrastructure, Spotnana founder and CEO Sarosh Waghmar said.

“We’ve been saying that this is an open platform, and Brex has executed against that,” Waghmar said. “They have taken the platform, built on top of it and created more value for existing customers.”

With the travel service added, users will be able to book and change travel within the app, receive agent support, get receipts—including Level Three data from hotels—and see policies, not just when booking but throughout the trip, such as what is acceptable to spend on Uber rides and meals, Dubugras said. It also leverages Brex’s budgeting capabilities, with which finance teams can create and adjust budgets, and travelers can ensure they are compliant with those budgets.

“When you have a budget, and people have an easy way to track it, they think more about the ROI of each trip,” Dubugras said. “If they only have $10,000 to spend and everyone has to travel, the travel managers have to think, ‘Is this travel OK, or is that travel better?’ It forces that prioritization.”

Brex is also touting the “unbiased inventory” available via the Spotnana platform, which brings in content including from global distribution systems, New Distribution Capability connections and other direct API integrations with airlines as well as content from local and low-cost carriers not traditionally available through the GDS. Travelers see what is in policy with their trip, Dubugras said. [Editor’s note, March 22: Spotnana later clarified that travelers will be able to see all options in the platform, but it will clearly indicate what is in policy.]

Since launching Empower last year, Brex reports that it has “[onboarded] hundreds of thousands of employees globally” onto the platform, and Dubugras said he expects a “high attachment rate” of users to the travel booking service. Some customers already have been using the travel service for the past few months, and Brex is now ready to bring more customers onboard, though he said there is “a little bit of a queue.” It should be widely available within the next few months, he said.

Travel customers on Empower listed by Brex include student monitoring software GoGuardian, Miso Robotics, maintenance management provider FMX and Satellite Healthcare.

Brex Travel is the latest integration of travel on the fintech side. Business and spend management platform Coupa last year launched a travel booking module, built from its acquisition of Pana. Corporate spend management startup Ramp last year also launched a travel tool and a partner program that included booking platform integrations.

Travel companies, meanwhile, have been expanding their reach into the payments side as well, including Sabre’s acquisition of Conferma Pay last year and Amadeus set to launch its own payments-focused business, Outpayce, this year.

Brex itself in late 2018 announced a partnership with TravelBank for a booking tool. A Brex spokesperson confirmed it is “moving away” from working with TravelBank as it launches the new Spotnana-powered booking capabilities, the difference being that they are fully embedded in Brex rather than requiring a link out.

“TravelBank has been a great partner to Brex from the very beginning, and like us, they care deeply about serving the startup community,” according to a statement from Brex. “Since [TravelBank] was acquired by U.S. Bancorp, they’ve continued to expand and diversify their offerings and so has Brex.”

Brex Travel is the second major travel offering springing from Spotnana technology to be announced this month. A few weeks ago, travel industry veteran Mark Walton announced a new travel management company, Solutions Travel, that is built on Spotnana’s travel-as-a-service technology stack.

Michael B. Baker www.businesstravelnews.com