Digital Transactions Authoritative, insightful and timely information for payments professionals
Card programs for specialized payments often get lost in the shuffle, but a pair of developments this week indicate the market for card-driven payments remains vibrant in the age of cardless digital transactions. This is especially the case lately with respect to markets like dealerships and housing.
Brex LLC, a corporate card and spend-management platform, said its services have been integrated with Tekion, a provider of cloud technology for more than 3,000 automobile dealers, to create Brex for Tekion Spend. At the same time, mobile-payments technology provider Blytz announced an integration with Rent Manager, software for property managers, in an effort to ease payments for tenants.
The news from Brex, a unit of Capital One, arrives at a time when payments providers are finding a vibrant market by joining forces with the technology-platform providers that serve automobile dealerships. By working with Tekion, Brex says it is the first corporate card provider tackling what it points to as the “operational complexity” inherent in car dealership groups. This specialized market is awash in paper, Brex says, with dealerships writing more than 100,000 checks yearly at a cost of $5 each.
The partnership with Tekion, Brex says, combines Brex’s corporate card operation with Tekion to enable such functions as real-time reconciliation and instant issuance of Brex cards. One key to this operation lies in the reliance on existing dealership-management technology, the parties say,
“Brex Embedded exists to bring … financial infrastructure to companies and customers inside the platforms they already depend on,” says Art Levy, Brex’s chief business officer, in a statement. Brex says a broad rollout for Brex for Tekion Spend is planned to occur throughout Tekion’s dealership system this year.
Brex’s move into dealerships comes as the market has been embracing more advanced financial technology for operations, including payments. Update Promise in February agreed to integrate PayPal and Venmo in the normal service workflow at dealerships, while DealerPay in January launched a capability for dealerships to collect payments via text messaging or email.
And in October, Priority Technology Holdings announced an aggressive expansion into automotive servicing with its acquisition of DMSJV LLC, a payments provider whose services include surcharging to help dealers recover transaction costs.
Similar partnerships are forming in other markets, including apartment management to collect rent, as illustrated by the announcement Tuesday that Blytz, a payments and collections company, has integrated with Rent Manager, a provider of property-management software.
The combination is expected to lean on Blytz’s mobile-payment capabilities to enable more and earlier rent payments while easing the burdens falling on back-office workers, the companies say. “We believe getting paid should be as simple as sending a text message,” said Robyn Burkinshaw, founder and chief executive of Blytz, in a statement.
