Brex Preferred Card for Navan
Art Levy, Chief Business Officer at Brex, on the strategy of Brex Embedded
This shows Navan has stopped treating cards as a neutral input and is now using one preferred issuer to make its travel product work better for large global customers. Brex is not just another card connected through Navan Connect. It is the deeply integrated option that gives per booking virtual cards and 100% travel reconciliation, which makes Navan stickier and gives Brex a high intent way into enterprise accounts that already buy travel through Navan.
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The partnership is explicitly a joint distribution motion. Brex describes embedded cards as a way to meet enterprise customers inside the workflows they already use, then expand into broader spend management, bill pay, and purchasing cards after landing the travel card.
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Navan had already moved from its own card to a bring your own card model through Navan Connect, which links to more than 250 banks across 100 currencies. Picking Brex as the preferred option means keeping flexibility for existing cards, while steering customers who want the cleanest reconciliation to one tighter integration.
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This is also a competitive choice. Ramp is pushing an all in one stack of cards, bill pay, procurement, travel, and treasury, while Brex is leaning into best of breed enterprise partnerships with Navan and Coupa. Navan is effectively betting that a specialist global card partner strengthens its travel product more than adding more issuer relationships would.
From here, the likely path is deeper preferred partnerships, not a marketplace of equal card issuers. As enterprise buyers keep separate owners for travel, procurement, and spend, the winners will be the combinations that remove reconciliation work at the point of purchase. That favors tighter Brex inside Navan integration and gives both companies a cleaner route upmarket.