From Card Product to Finance Infrastructure
Andrew Hoag, CEO of Teampay on building expense management for the enterprise
Enterprise spend startups win upmarket when they stop looking like a card product and start behaving like finance infrastructure. For Teampay, that meant building the controls large finance teams require, audits, permissions, multi subsidiary and multi currency support, SSO, SCIM, and HR integrations, so a company can plug it into existing systems instead of forcing a risky rip and replace. That is why enterprise adoption often starts as a layer beside legacy tools, then expands as more employee spend flows through it.
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The hard part is not just serving more users, it is serving more entities, rules, and systems. A 10,000 employee company needs approvals by role, subsidiary, and geography, then clean data pushed into Workday, identity systems, and accounting workflows. That integration burden is the price of entry for enterprise deals.
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Teampay’s wedge is practical. Enterprises rarely throw out a legacy expense stack that already has years of custom integrations. They add a modern tool for employee purchasing and approvals, then shift more spend over time. That land and expand motion is common in finance software because workflow adoption matters more than a headline system replacement.
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The category has since rewarded vendors that pair enterprise depth with broader product coverage. Ramp grew to an estimated $1B annualized revenue by August 2025 through cards, bill pay, procurement, travel, and treasury, while Brex reached an estimated $700M by August 2025 with a global cards and spend suite. Scale features get a startup into the room, but product breadth often determines who becomes the standard.
The next phase of the market is deeper consolidation around the finance team’s daily workflow. Expense tools that can sit cleanly inside identity, HR, ERP, and procurement systems will keep moving upmarket, and the winners will be the ones that turn controlled spend into a broader system of record for how companies buy, approve, and reconcile money.