Authorised in the Netherlands, Brex can now issue EU corporate cards and originate SEPA payments, positioning its spend-management platform with regulatory footing on both sides of the Atlantic.
Brex has been authorised to operate directly across the European Union, securing a Payment Institution (PI) licence via the Netherlands and removing the long-standing requirement that customers have a US presence.
The company says this lets it issue locally accepted corporate cards and originate SEPA payments (direct debits and credit transfers) to EU-based firms.
Until now Brex could support multi-currency operations but couldn’t sell its platform to EU-headquartered companies without a US link. With the PI licence, Brex can sell and service directly in the bloc, positioning it to compete natively on card acceptance, controls and settlement—rather than via third-party workarounds.
Brex frames this as a step toward “no third-party intermediaries” for EU issuance and payments.
Brex plans a phased rollout, onboarding select EU customers in the coming months and aiming to be fully operational by early 2026, with an Amsterdam base, a local board and initial hiring already in place. A separate UK licence is on the roadmap.
US press coverage notes banking and bill-pay aren’t available on day one of the EU move; those are intended to follow. That nuance reduces near-term product breadth but doesn’t blunt the regulatory win.
Brex’s competitive angle
Brex’s pitch is that it’s now the only “intelligent finance platform” with licences in both the US and EU; it holds a US money-transmission licensing plus an EU PI licence, which, if sustained, creates a defensible moat on global corporate cards and spend.
At first read this could sound like a marketing claim, but there’s substance behind it.
US peers expanding into Europe largely rely on partner EMIs or banks. For example, Ramp’s EU and UK cards are issued by Stripe’s licensed entities, not by Ramp under its own EU authorisation.
Navan (travel and expense) similarly issues via Stripe/Adyen in Europe and Celtic Bank in the US. That partner model works, but it can constrain product control, economics and roadmap velocity compared with holding your own licence.
Meanwhile, EU natives are licensed at home, but not on both sides of the Atlantic. Spendesk operates as a French payment institution in the EEA and issues US cards via Sutton Bank.
Payhawk holds EMI licences in the EEA and UK and issues US cards via Cross River Bank. These platforms have strong European regulatory footing, but their US distribution relies on sponsor banks rather than their own US money-transmission stack, unlike Brex.
Owning regulatory permissions in both regions should let Brex standardise policies, budgets and controls globally, price more flexibly, and integrate local rails (SEPA) without vendor dependencies. That’s particularly attractive for EU-headquartered firms expanding to the US or US multinationals running one card/expense policy across entities.
