Airbase Trades Interchange for Software

Airbase is trading away a fast growing but low control revenue stream for a stickier enterprise software relationship. In spend management, interchange rewards win early adoption because customers get free software and card perks. Airbase is built for companies that care more about approval rules, ERP integrations, multi entity controls, and a single workflow for cards, invoices, reimbursements, and purchase requests, so subscription fees fit the product better than maximizing card yield.

• Competitors like Ramp and Brex were built around routing as much spend as possible onto their cards, then using interchange to subsidize free or low cost software. That works best in startups and SMBs, where speed and rewards matter more than deep controls and custom finance workflows.
  1 sacra 4 sacra 5 sacra
• Airbase and Teampay represent the software first branch of the category. The core job is not moving money, it is deciding whether a purchase should happen, who approves it, how it is coded, and how it lands in NetSuite or another ERP. That is why enterprise buyers will pay for the software itself.
  2 sacra 3 sacra
• The market has been moving in Airbase's direction. By early 2024, even the card led leaders were shifting the battleground away from pure card volume toward subscription SaaS, bill pay, and broader workflow products, because interchange alone is easier to copy and harder to defend upmarket.
  1 sacra 4 sacra 5 sacra

Going forward, the winners in spend management will look less like rewards programs and more like finance systems of record. That favors products that can own request through reconciliation across many payment types. Airbase's cashback posture is an early signal that margin and defensibility will come from workflow depth, not from squeezing a few more basis points out of card spend.