Platform targets middle-market firms as fintech rivals reshape spending
The new corporate cashback card is Amex’s first integrated with expense-management software, and the platform runs on a new dedicated mobile app that will eventually deploy AI agents to automate routine expense-management and accounts-payable workflows.
“Amex Corporate is a fundamentally different way that we are allowing middle-market companies to manage their expenses with greater control and greater transparency,” Joabar said.
The launch responds to growing pressure from corporate-card and expense-management fintechs. Ramp, which provides bookkeeping and AI finance tools to businesses, announced a funding round this spring that valued it at $44 billion. Brex, a corporate card and expense-management provider, was acquired by Capital One Finance for $5.15 billion in April.
Amex has taken what the company describes as a measured approach to building out its corporate business. In April 2025, the company acquired Center, a smaller expense-management software platform. This year, it bought Hyper, an AI-agent platform backed by OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman that uses AI agents to autonomously execute expense-management tasks. Wednesday’s launch is the culmination of the Center integration work, Joabar said.
As fintechs have rolled out modern spend-management services, Amex’s corporate business has become a top priority for growth. “I need to see that this business receives probably a lot more attention than it has ever received in its entire life at American Express,” Le Caillec said during a conference earlier this month.
The expense-management software that comes with the new card allows finance teams to tailor spending policies for different employees or departments and automatically captures spending data across cards to help close the books faster. A new expense mobile app automatically generates spending reports based on purchases so employees do not have to create the reports manually. The app also reviews expenses against company policy and flags anything that does not align.
The services are meant to give more control to employers who want to track how much and where money is being spent, and to give employees more clarity on company policies and spending limits. The platform serves middle-market businesses that make between $10 million and $300 million in annual revenue, Joabar said. The new services will all be available on one platform, with more AI features and accounts-payable offerings planned in the weeks and months after the initial launch.
“There’s a whole pipeline of software that will continue to build out our business membership,” Joabar said.
Later this year, the company intends to introduce new AI agents that can message employees with recommendations about their expenses. Employees can ask the agent about expense policies, submission deadlines, and other questions. Finance teams can ask the agent about company spending and request spend-data analysis.
Amex also plans to expand its corporate card platform to include accounts-payable software so businesses can manage employee expenses and pay vendor bills in one place. The software will automate certain steps of the process, including invoice intake, approvals, payment, and reconciliation.
Joabar said he expects new iterations of the corporate card to come out more quickly over the next several years, as AI is helping speed up the process from prototyping to launch. “It’s helping us deliver things more quickly to our customers,” Joabar said. “It’s taking the delivery cycle time down from quarters to weeks and months.”