
Launch HN: Brex (YC W17) – Corporate Credit Card for Startups - hdubugras
Hi HN –<p>We are Henrique and Pedro of Brex (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;brex.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;brex.com&#x2F;</a>). We&#x27;ve built a corporate credit card for startups that has high limits, an instant online application and no personal guarantees.<p>Pedro and I built our first payments business in Brazil, Pagar.me, when we were teenagers. We came to the U.S. to attend Stanford. We joined YC W17 and realized quickly – even with a seed round in the millions – that we could not get a corporate credit card. We are Brazilian, young, and do not have U.S. credit. Even if we did have credit – we know that personally guaranteeing a credit card makes no sense for a business (more on that later).<p>In Brazil, we raised $300K initially (when we were 16) from an investor that was willing to take a chance on us. In Brazil, even though there are 200 million people, there is very little venture capital financing and limited startup infrastructure (accelerators, resources, technical talent, executives experienced with high growth). We knew that $300K was all we were getting, so we had to find a business that could be cash flow positive quickly. It was easier to do that accepting payments online (which naturally generates cash), but it was an operational challenge for sure. We were able to grow quickly in Brazil because we hit the market at the right time, as ecommerce was transitioning to online payments and because we, better than any of the foreign competitors, understood the nuance of Brazil. Specifically on that point, in Brazil the consumer has the option to pay for any card transaction in installments, and that requires a cash outflow for the merchant. Pagar.me figured out how to productize that best to the online market there.<p>When we got to the U.S., we assumed that the payments system here would be significantly more mature and sophisticated than it was in Brazil, however that was not the case. Particularly on the issuing side (banks extending credit cards), there has been very little innovation or using technology to innovate on features. That is how Brex was born. Over the past year we’ve been incubating and improving and just launched with an online self-signup that lets you get access to a virtual card in minutes. We waited to launch until we had this feature, as we know how much of a pain it is to go through the back and forth of online and paper-based applications. Brex underwrites by connecting directly with your bank account, which means we can offer higher limits than other cards, often 10x-20x more.<p>From a software perspective, we rebuilt all of the payments tech from scratch, which we learned how to do in our last business. Even then, to build Brex it was still grueling having to deal with the obscure regulations surrounding Know Your Customer (KYC), heavy oversight from banking partners, and complexities associated with interacting directly with Visa. In doing so, we built awesome features like instant virtual cards issued to you and your team and we solved something this time that has been bugging us forever – the fact that you can never tell what a credit card charge is on your statement! We changed the data to give you the actual merchant &#x2F; vendor and a link to the website. When we did this, we also realized we could do something really unique with receipts – because we know the actual vendor &#x2F; merchant, we can match any receipt sent to us via SMS or email to your transaction immediately. No need to save receipts or deal with other integrations that have a huge delay between matching a receipt to a transaction, we do it in real time.<p>Interestingly, from a technical standpoint, we did all this in Elixir. We thought it would be a good choice (and so far we are happy with our decision) because of the distributed nature of the systems that we built and we could rely on the Erlang VM to provide that infrastructure out-of-the-box. Our domain knowledge from Pagar.me allowed us to anticipate the system boundaries and therefore we could build our backend as a distributed system from day one. 
Another unusual feature about the Brex launch is that we are launching relatively late in our history and with a pretty significant amount of capital from our Series B. We launched the business at YC, but based on our background with Pagar.me and that we were focused on payments again, we raised a ~$7M seed round in Spring 2017. That round was led by Ribbit Capital – which we liked given our connection to Micky there and their expertise in Fintech. YC Continuity led our Series B. In both rounds, for us, it’s all about the relationship with the partner and firm, and we have been huge beneficiaries of the YC ecosystem.<p>On a personal note, for us the non-personal guarantee aspect of our product is most salient. As I mentioned, we are foreign entrepreneurs who don’t have access to banking products in the U.S. It was demoralizing to come to the U.S. after being successful in Brazil and not be able to get a card – especially given how much activity, particularly online, requires a credit card. Personal guarantees mean an entrepreneur who has already taken a ton of risk has to further put their personal financials on the line, which even if the company pays on time, can hurt his or her credit.<p>One aspect of the product that we’d love HN feedback on is the signup flow. We gathered great feedback from our beta, and we waited to launch until we had an instant signup product. In financial services, signup flows have meaningfully more constraints than do many consumer signup flows – particularly compared to those with freemium models. For example, we need to collect business information to comply with regulations around anti-money laundering and Know Your Customer standards, as well as ensure the customer’s ability to pay and set up autopay. These constraints mean not only a longer signup flow, but also one that integrates many third party vendors to do compliance, fraud and credit checks. The more integrations and data to handle, the more edge cases we need to be able to support seamlessly. It took a ton of engineering effort to get here, plus a lot of time enhancing our compliance processes and credit framework. In light of those constraints, we’re specifically looking for user feedback on whether or not the flow feels logical, intuitive and simple – and if there are adjustments to the order, text or design that could improve the UI. But we&#x27;re interested to hear any of your ideas and experiences and discuss the Fintech space generally too. Thanks for taking the time to read this, we’re really happy to be posting here :)<p>Henrique and Pedro
======
jedberg
Got stuck in the signup flow. First, I was super sketched about giving you my
bank details. After a while I found the tiny text that says you use a third
party, but I couldn't verify that.

I decided to trust you since you're a YC company, and put in my creds anyway.
To log into my bank, they required me to send a verification code to my phone.
The text never came, but your flow has no way to go back and either request
the text message again or have them send an email instead, so I'm now stuck on
bank account verification. :(

So, areas for improvement:

1) Use bigger text to show you're using a third party for bank login, and
maybe some way to verify that.

2) Create a way to request another token via text or change to email.

~~~
hdubugras
Because it’s a 3rd party (we use finicity) there are some issue with some
people from time to time :/

Support should contact you soon to help fix it. Noted on making more clear
that it’s a 3rd party!

~~~
wenbo
was there any particular reason your team went with finicity? You might want
to give [https://plaid.com](https://plaid.com) a shot.

 _I am not affiliated with Plaid._

~~~
hdubugras
We tried - finicity serves intuit so it works better for business/corporate
accounts. Plaid is better for consumers.

~~~
wenbo
got it, thanks for replying! Best of luck with Brex!

------
cperciva
Thoughts in no particular order:

1\. Tell me what the rewards are. Right now I get credit card reward points
worth ~1.5% of my monthly spending; I'm not going to switch cards based on "we
have fantastic rewards, trust us!"

2\. Find a way to integrate with Stripe! They've already done all the AML/KYC
stuff, and they also have plenty of information about my revenue. For that
matter, why have money bounce via a bank account -- find a way for me to have
the money I receive via Stripe pay off the Brex card first.

3\. Seconding the request to support people outside of the USA. My company
does its banking via a US bank account but both I and my company are based in
Canada.

~~~
hdubugras
1 - Today with Brex if you signup and have Brex be your primary card you get:
$5k of AWS, $105 in Doordash and $105 on Instacart. Although we're building a
new rewards program that will launch later this year, would love to hear your
thoughts on what a great rewards program looks like for you.

2 - Interesting thought on the payment! Will investigate it. On the AML/KYC by
regulation we can't rely on another party, we have to do our own :/

3 - Working on it!

~~~
cperciva
_we 're building a new rewards program that will launch later this year, would
love to hear your thoughts on what a great rewards program looks like for
you._

Honestly, dollars are fungible. For less sophisticated customers, points which
can be redeemed specifically for travel are attractive because people
anticipate getting better deals than they end up with; but I'd be disappointed
if that works well for the audience you're targetting here. Just make it a
cashback %age based on the fees you get from the card network.

 _On the AML /KYC by regulation we can't rely on another party, we have to do
our own :/_

Ah, too bad. But even if you have to do your own AML/KYC paperwork, pulling
data from Stripe should help with risk scoring, right? In particular, for
those of us with unfunded but profitable startups.

~~~
kenneth
I disagree. I have no interest in fungible dollars when the alternative is
miles which can be used to get outsized return on experiences.

I have plenty of ways of making money, and trying to optimize for a %age of
cash back is not particularly interesting.

Miles and points on the other hand can be used to get experiences that would
otherwise be completely out of question due to their price. It adds something
meaningful to my life.

Flying to Australia in first class on Emirates is more memorable than making
$1,500 of cash-back.

~~~
StavrosK
...but... you can use the money to buy a first class ticket!

~~~
kenneth
A first-class ticket on Emirates bought in cash is a whole lot more than
$1,500. But it'd be about about the points equivalent of that.

~~~
StavrosK
How do you figure? As far as I know, you can't buy points with money, so it's
$XX,XXX worth of flights.

~~~
kenneth
Take the Chase Freedom Unlimited card, for example. It ears 1.5% cash-back in
the form of points. Those same points can also be transferred to airlines (as
long as you have their premium card)

If you have 115,000 points, you can use them towards a $1,150 cash credit. On
the other hand, those points can also be used to book a Singapore to Zürich
flight in their brand new first class, which would ordinarily cost $6,000+.
one-way

An even more pronounced example: with just 30,000 points (or what would be
$300 in cash-back), transferred to United, you can book HKG-SYD (a 13h trip)
in business class, which would ordinarily cost $3,000+ one-way.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh, I see, you mean credit cards. I was thinking miles accrued from flights
and was confused, thanks.

------
claar
About the signup flow:

I'm a founder searching for a corporate credit card, so naturally I'm
comparing benefits with other cards.

The rewards page boasts "Brex gives you valuable rewards equivalent to
500,000+ points on competitor card programs.", but gives no specific
information about these rewards without signing up. This felt deceptive /
scammy to me, and I instinctively closed the page.

Later I found the rewards FAQ question, but the statement "Like our cards, our
rewards are different. They offer valuable savings to companies on the
products they use most, like software, servers and advertising. These rewards
help build the company, rather than competitor rewards programs that offer
consumer-oriented benefits for individuals." again was too vague to know
whether it was worth signing up to learn more.

Just my anecdote, but I would suggest offering more details on the reward
program pre-signup.

~~~
hdubugras
Today with Brex if you signup and have Brex be your primary card you get: $5k
of AWS, $105 in Doordash and $105 on Instacart.

Although we're building a new rewards program that will launch later this
year, would love to hear your thoughts on what a great rewards program looks
like for you.

And thnaks on the feedback on the clarity around the rewards - will improve!

~~~
claar
$5k of AWS is indeed incredible; can you share how you are able to offer such
a generous benefit?

~~~
hdubugras
We partnered with AWS :)

~~~
domrdy
Is this related to AWS Activate ? Can we still get the credit if we are
already part of the Activate program ?

------
Intermernet
"Tired of confusing international finance complexity? Just Brex It!"

Did you guys sell this idea to the UK government?

------
jacquesm
That is quite a story. Congratulations to both of you for both managing to
turn every downside you were facing into an upside and tremendous
perseverance.

~~~
hdubugras
Thanks!!

------
mcherm
I'm also in the credit card world (I suppose I'm one of your competitors: I
work for the Small Business team at Capital One). (Obligatory disclaimer: I
speak only for myself here, and do not in any way represent the views of my
employer.)

First of all, I'd like to say "Great Work!" You have a compelling and
interesting product, with a very interesting set of features. Your rewards
program is innovative (especially the idea of offering AWS credits, given your
target audience). I'll let others who are more qualified comment on your
website and signup process, but I wanted to let you know that I think your
product is quite innovative.

I am actually curious how you are managing risk on this card. Underwriting
businesses well can be difficult given the paucity of reliable data, but
underwriting startups is even more difficult as there IS no history to go on
for the business. Most lenders address that by relying heavily on a credit
assessment of the founder(s), but you are offering the (unusual) "non-personal
guarantee". If it's not something you consider a trade secret, what approach
are you taking to assess and balance the risk of losses in making loans to a
category of business famous for it's high rate of failure?

(By the way, if you're open to having a conversation with a competitor and
would like to have a chat, reach out to me by email.)

~~~
tixocloud
I'm in analytics for several banks (including credit cards) and have always
thought that one of the key competitive edges is managing risk so in my mind,
it'd be a trade secret ;)

But also curious about the answer to the question :)

~~~
mcherm
> in my mind, it'd be a trade secret

Yes, I will be completely unsurprised if that's the answer, and I don't mean
to pry. But I'm also aware that there are benefits to open conversation and to
the extent that I'm allowed to, I am happy to engage in such!

~~~
tixocloud
Agreed. Happy to engage as well.

What part of small business credit cards are you in?

~~~
mcherm
I'm an architect for our Small Business department (used to do just the Small
Business Bank, more recently expanded my purview to cover Small Business
Credit Card as well. Further conversation is probably better done over email
(my contact info is in my profile).

------
dhirenb
Love the clean sign up and landing page without endless jargon. Good job!

It would be great if you could clarify what the rewards actually are
(especially since they are highlighted quite a bit).

eg: Are the rewards on AWS double/triple points on your spend? Or do Brex
members received some amount of free compute credit?

~~~
hdubugras
Also - we're building a new rewards program and would love to know your
thoughts on what a great rewards program would look like for you.

~~~
adamfisk
For us it’s hard to conceptually free ourselves from our existing points
system with Chase. We spend about $125k/month on our card and get something
like 1% in points back. So we blow past the $5k AWS thing (which I agree is a
cool concept) in about half a month!

I’d encourage you guys to try to keep innovating on the rewards side though
(like you are with the current rewards). It seems like one trick is that it
has to scale to businesses like ours that are still smallish but have
significant spend.

------
kposehn
Love the concept and you also managed to nab a former coworker of mine.

But: I highly recommend _not_ having that per-user fee waive promo. You never
know who might signup today. We would all happily pay anyway most likely :)

~~~
rokhayakebe
_I highly recommend not having that per-user fee waive promo_

Correct. At $5/month per user I "assume" more people will sign up than if it
were free. This is a corporate/business product, free does not yield more
confidence.

~~~
pbreit
Considering that Amex business charge cards are free for employees I would not
have the same sentiment. Card issuers make lots of money on the % fee that
merchants pay to process a credit card transaction.

------
ckdarby
Kind of shocked on raising the funds, I guess you have had good adoption on
the platform?

Maybe I am missing the point of what is being solved? Access to business
credit is a really straightforward process, you can incorporate and with ZERO
assets or revenue have a 5k credit card issued on the spot.

In terms of managing credit cards within a company and the other features
you're listing out they looked already solved by a company called Emburse,
[https://www.emburse.com](https://www.emburse.com).

I guess this is a run for the market before Emburse takes it over?

~~~
hdubugras
Hey! Indeed we do have very good traction. But the fact that you can get
business credit with zero assets or revenue is true if you're wiling to
personally guarantee the card, because then it's just like getting a personal
card but with your business name on it. I as an immigrant without a lot of
personal credit history was unable to get a card when starting Brex. Today, we
raised over $57m and we're still unable to get cards from banks. We're the
first card to actually underwrite startups and give them a card with high
limits and no personal guarantee.

------
apayan
Hi Henrique and Pedro. Great service idea. I love the write up.

I just signed up and after clicking the activation link in the email, I
started the application. When it go to the step asking about my bank, I said
it wasn't listed and then I typed in my bank name. Now I'm sitting at the
final page with the 'Submit Application' button, but it's grayed out. I'm
using Firefox Nightly on Ubuntu.

The rest of the flow was pretty easy though. Nice job.

EDIT: Larissa was able to help me via the intercom chat. Great support
integration!

~~~
hdubugras
Oh glad that worked out!

------
Theodores
I liked your story and would like to help you with the signup flow, however I
live outside the US so I thought I would just run your homepage through Google
DevTools Lighthouse Audit for you.

Seems that you have a few easy wins to get your site up to scratch. Compress
the images, add a basic progressive web app to impress Googlebot and put in a
few of the other minor fixes (e.g. 'uses document.write()') and you should be
there with an accessible site that ranks well.

Google's mod_pagespeed will fix the images for you and tidy up the downloads,
mushing the scripts together to reduce the js startup time. I think you can
also get rid of the polyfills for older browsers.

Maximal accessibility isn't about making the site for blind people it is about
making the site work for those that have high data rates and poor 3G
connections. However, the ethos of accessibility is on-brand for your product.

I audit everything these days and you are not doing badly compared to a lot
that I see. Always room for improvement and premature optimisation is the root
of all evil, hence my suggestion of just letting mod_pagespeed do it for you.

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/module/](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/module/)

------
dsr_
This appears to be a debit card that processes at the end of a statement
period rather than immediately. Is that accurate?

If so, is the phrase "credit card" in the FAQ a mistake?

~~~
hdubugras
It's technically a Charge Card, which is a type of credit card that doesn't
allow you to keep a balance.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_card)

~~~
danielvinson
How is that better than a debit card?

~~~
chaosite
Fraud.

You have protections under both systems (debit & credit), but the ones on the
credit card are much more in your favor. With credit cards it's pretty hard to
end up on the hook for the fraudulent charges (50$ limit on liability), while
on debit cards you have to report the charges before a deadline.

~~~
hdubugras
Yep!

------
faitswulff
I have to say, this is the best Launch HN I've ever read. The detail and
narrative are great. Good luck!

------
jonathanB1
For three months, I always wondered how I could boost my credit score after
constantly getting ripped off by lenders, credit card companies and banks due
to my poor credit score. I was constantly denied loans and grants because my
credit score was low until I met the Alpha in Hacking who helped me increase
my credit score from 454 to 836 just within two weeks. I doubted his
credibility at first because he asked for upfront payment but as soon as I
mustered courage and tried him out, I have been smiling.

I love the fact that he is always precise and delivers properly with detailed
reports. His prices are quite favorable and trust me expect a good and clean
job, his services are trustworthy… you can contact him via:
alphahackservice@workmail.com

------
soneca
Henrique and Pedro, parabéns!

Congrats on your trajectory so far! You are a real inspiration.

Do you happen to have some published interviews or blog post sharing more
about your history? I always hear good things about you both, but it is hard
to find primary accounts of your trajectory.

I wish you the best of luck!

~~~
hdubugras
Thanks! YC published an interview with me yesterday.

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/henrique-dubugras-and-anu-
harih...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/henrique-dubugras-and-anu-hariharan-
discuss-brexs-corporate-card-for-startups/)

Let me know your thoughts on it :)

~~~
soneca
Great, thanks! Will listen to it on my way home!

------
troyk
I've been looking for a something to do virtual cards for single-use payments
and/or assign a virtual card to a vendor, preferably with webhook style
notifications posting back to our servers with charge activity.

Is brex a fit now, or in the near future?

~~~
hdubugras
You can easily create a virtual card for vendors and set low limits! But we
don't support webhooks yet, but good idea. We don't believe in single-use
payments because it's a pain to manage multiple card number, but we soon we'll
have the ability to restrict a card to a vendor/category so you can just add
specific payment abilities to the same card number.

------
tixocloud
For most matters, trust is less of an issue but for finances and banking
details, it’s an incredibly important aspect of doing business.

I work in analytics/data science at a bank. We’ve been doing lots of great
research on fintechs and entrepreneurs.

Re: fintech - Trust comes up a lot so anything you can do (i.e. partnerships,
social proof, etc) would go some way. Customers use us as their main account
but regularly funnel money to startup banks. However, they’ve mentioned they
would never really put large amounts of money with startup banks and are happy
to continue with their current setup.

------
goods97
Hi Henrique and Pedro! Interesting product - could you guys elaborate on how
Brex is able to offer cards with much higher limits without any personal
guarantees?

~~~
hdubugras
Hey! So the way we do it is that when you signup for Brex you link your bank
account. We use that data + investor data to try to predict the ability to pay
instead of looking at financial history. The caveat there is that your limit
can go either up or down with time, depending on your cash burn, fundraising
and other factors. That's why we're only working with startups, because
they're very predictable in terms of cash spend. They raise rounds, spend
money, raise another round or die.

------
mjkunc
I'm a former purchasing manager turned developer, I can tell you the p-card
business is ripe for innovation. This is a great space to go after. Good luck!

~~~
hdubugras
Thanks! Excited to enter this space.

------
crsv
What will you be using my transactional information for? Will you be
commercializing my transactional information in some way? With the banking
information you require for sign up will you be funneling other financial
information about my startup to other companies? What safeguards do I have
that a competitor won't have a way to gain knowledge about the financial state
of my company through data commercialized by Brex?

~~~
hdubugras
We will use your transaction data for underwriting purposes. We contractually
have the ability to commercialize your data in an aggregate way, so for
example we could say “starups on brex are spending more money on saas every
month this year compared to last year”. But never the name of specific
information about your company. Don’t worry, your competitors won’t have
access to your data.

------
dustingetz
Boostrapping, so I pay corporate expenses out of a personal account on months
when the corporate account is low: is this card right for me?

~~~
hdubugras
Probably not... most of the applications that are approved have some sort of
3rd party person/institution financing them. If you do end up raising money,
then it’ll be right! Over time we hope to improve our credit model to support
more bootstrapping startups

------
soared
How is this different from a, for example, chase business credit card (or
debit card for that matter)? If you have funding but no credit history you can
get one. I was 19 when I got mine. I don't understand how connecting to my
bank account provides 10-20x more credit if you're already verifying my
startup's funding.

~~~
hdubugras
1 - chase will require a personal guarantee, what that means is that you’re
personally responsible for the credit card. Your ssn is on the line. With
Brex, we underwrite your company.

2 - our credit algorithm is actually very different and the limit changes
according to your bank balances.

3 - it’s actually a credit card (technically a charge card), so it has all the
protections of a standard credit card, people dont have access directly to
your balance like a debit card.

Does that make sense?

~~~
barbegal
What are the benefits over a prepaid credit card?

~~~
hdubugras
Oh and if you mean the secured credit card - we can give higher limits without
having to set up a security deposit and tie up your cash

------
seibelj
Our company (Airfox) is a happy Brex user. Thanks for the prompt customer
support. Really solid product!

~~~
hdubugras
Thanks! Happy you guys like it :)

------
ronakvora
This may be prying and off topic, so sorry if it is, but how do you guys plan
on making money? From the $5/user/mo fee? Or does Visa hand over a piece of
the 2.x% transaction fee?

------
mhluongo
Well-funded fintech co that just ran into this- going to check it out!

~~~
hdubugras
Let me know your thoughts :)

------
cfv
Heyyyyyyy congrats!

Any chance of getting pagar.me to Argentina? Our options suck here

~~~
hdubugras
We sold the company - so up to the new management!

------
cm2012
Business financing is really hard. Look into OnDeck’s quarterly reports, they
are the biggest in this space (and a public company you can learn from).

------
XVincentX
Is this US only? I'd be interested in trying the service. We're based in
Europe.

------
colbyh
You bought a billboard before launching on HN? Not sure if very impressed or
very confused.

~~~
hdubugras
We bought it together with the press launch, which was last Tuesday :)

------
jbverschoor
No support for EU countries?

~~~
hdubugras
Not yet unfortunately

------
dosy
This was a great write up. Also I hope I get a chance to use and love the
product. I'm a founder who lives outside the US and has a US company and bank
account via Stripe Atlas. Just signed up and got to the "Information Requests"
branch of the flow. Entered my passport, birthdate in fine. But when it came
to "Enter the person's address", there were only options for US addresses. I'm
living outside the US so I hesitated between using my company mailing address,
and my last address in the USA, and went with the latter (but probably the
former is a better idea). Also, regarding the interface, there was no "submit"
button on the address view, which let me feel confused as when I had entered
my business address, I couldn't find the button. When nothing happened, I
thought, "maybe, the system is checking it, and it's invalid", so I entered my
last US address instead, then hit "enter" and it worked. You can consider this
some more user experience data :) Great writeup and thanks for making it
available and for the offer of waiving the fees USD5/users/month fees if you
do the first transaction before June 30.

~~~
pedrofranceschi
Pedro from Brex here :) Thanks for the feedback, super helpful! 1. We will
make sure to support international addresses for the individuals, thanks! 2.
On the submit button, did you sign-up from mobile/tablet by any chance?

~~~
dosy
You're welcome. I signed up with a Surface Pro but it wasn't in tablet mode.
Chrome 67.0.3396.99 on Windows 10. I tried resizing the browser window a few
times to see if a button would appear. I don't know (didn't check the elements
panel) but I felt maybe the view had become unable to scroll, and maybe there
was a button below the viewport. Anyway hope it helps :)

------
sitepodmatt
Not a problem now, but if you expand to the UK the word Brexit is on everyone
lips and will be for the next decade. Are you sure you won't suffer from Brex-
it association brand wise?

------
matte_black
Is this basically just using Visa’s API?

~~~
hdubugras
One of the parts is integrating with Visa, which for authorization purposes
does not have an API, it speaks ISO 8583. There is a lot of other things we
built from scratch, like statementing, collections, ledger, user management,
etc.

------
m1k32h07
THIS IS NOT A CREDIT CARD THIS IS A CHARGE CARD

~~~
dang
That was covered here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17419039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17419039).
If you have a substantive point, great, but you need to tell the reader what
it is so we can learn something.

Also, please don't use allcaps for emphasis; it's basically yelling, and the
site rules ask you not to:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

------
merinowool
I looked at the page:
[https://brex.com/legal/prohibited_activities/](https://brex.com/legal/prohibited_activities/)

I am curious about the language that you have used - in particular the use of
word "marijuana".

What is the reason to use such derogatory, offensive and deeply racist term
for cannabis?

I thought that in 2018 tech companies wouldn't be using language of the 70s
that has been used to promote hatred towards the users of this plant.

~~~
dang
Please don't break the site guidelines by taking threads on generic flamewar
tangents.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
merinowool
I did not intend to start a flame war, just wanted to highligh the fact that
the page uses language that is deeply offensive to me. I think I have a right
to do that especially that the authors were seeking an opinion. If you think I
did break any rules I am happy for you or the moderator to delete my comment.

~~~
dang
I believe you, but the problem is that then your language is offensive to
somebody else and they also think they have a right to respond in kind, and
down in flames we go. That's why the site rules ask people not to take HN
threads off topic in inflammatory directions. Divisive topics on the internet
work that way; they consume everything else if you let them, so we can't let
them.

