Brex - Empower Platform
Brex was scaling quickly, but its core spending experience was fragmented. Employees struggled to understand what they could spend, under what rules, and what was expected of them after a purchase. At the same time, admins needed tighter control and visibility as companies grew more complex.
The existing product surfaces solved individual problems well, but the system as a whole was hard to reason about, especially under real-world constraints like budgets, approvals, reimbursements, and policy enforcement.
This work focused on rebuilding the spending experience around a clearer set of primitives that could scale with both company size and complexity.
01
Challenge
Employees didn’t lack features, they lacked confidence. People didn’t know:
What rules applied to their card
When budgets reset or expired
Whether they needed approval or reimbursement
What would happen after they spent
For admins and finance teams, the problem inverted: visibility existed, but control was scattered across tools and workflows. The core challenge wasn’t “design a dashboard.” It was aligning mental models across employees, managers, and controllers without slowing anyone down
02
Solution
We introduced a unified wallet platform that connected cards, budgets, policies, and tasks into a single experience.
For employees:
Clear visibility into what they could spend and why
Immediate feedback when actions required follow-up
Fewer surprises after the fact
For admins and finance teams:
Centralized control without micromanagement
Consistent enforcement of policies across products
Scalable primitives that worked across company sizes and industries
Rather than treating wallet, expenses, and budgets as separate products, the system behaved as one.
03
Result
Empower launched in four months and was piloted with companies including GitLab and DoorDash. Adoption validated the underlying system approach, and the platform expanded to support customers like SeatGeek, Airtable, Robinhood, Allbirds, and Compass.
More importantly, the primitives introduced through Empower became a foundation for Brex’s broader platform, enabling expansion into new customer segments and industries while creating a core foundation that continues to scale today.