PEX secures US$160m to combine business credit with finance automation

Corporate card and spend-management provider PEX has secured US$160m in debt and equity financing to expand its business-credit programme and build a broader financial-automation platform for growing companies.

The financing was led by Bluff Point Associates. It includes a credit facility provided by Clear Haven Capital Management that will fund further expansion of PEX’s charge-card business, alongside equity capital for technology, sales, partnerships and product development.

PEX said its charge-card operation has recorded sustained triple-digit growth and that more than US$11.7bn of expenditure has passed through its platform since launch.

The company combines commercial cards, prepaid and disbursement products, vendor payments and expense-management software. Finance teams can set spending limits, restrict card use, collect receipts and synchronise transaction data with accounting and enterprise resource planning systems.

The proposition sits at the intersection of payments and working capital. PEX’s commercial-card product gives businesses extended payment terms, allowing them to cover expenses before settling the balance later. This can preserve cash during the period between paying suppliers and receiving customer revenue, although it remains a short-duration credit tool rather than a replacement for larger working-capital facilities.

The company intends to use the new capital to increase transaction capacity and widen access to its charge-card programme. It will also invest in artificial intelligence designed to automate receipt capture, transaction coding, approvals and other routine finance processes.

PEX argues that smaller companies increasingly want integrated infrastructure rather than separate cards, payment systems and expense applications. Bringing these functions together can improve visibility over spending and reduce the manual work required to reconcile transactions.

The funding also demonstrates how debt and equity can perform different roles within a financial-technology expansion. Equity supports product and organisational growth, while the credit facility provides the balance-sheet capacity required to extend more credit to customers.

PEX has not disclosed the division between debt and equity, the pricing of the facility or its maturity. Those omissions make it difficult to assess the company’s funding cost or the risk retained by its investors.

Nevertheless, the US$160m commitment gives PEX substantial capacity to compete in an increasingly crowded market where corporate-card companies are expanding into credit, payments and financial operations.