The Best BILL Spend & Expense Alternatives For Businesses

Every Brex card user will earn a minimum of 1x rewards. If you qualify for Brex’s top rewards program, you can earn points bonuses of:

• 7x points on rideshares and taxis
• 4x on Brex Travel
• 3x on restaurant purchases
• 2x on software subscriptions
• 1x on everything else

If you don’t qualify for the exclusive program, your earnings will be at 1x. If you opt for weekly or monthly payments instead of daily, you’ll receive 1 point less per dollar spent in most of those bonus categories.

Points never expire and can be redeemed for cash back via Brex Cash, applied to purchases through Brex Travel, or for statement credit, gift cards, or crypto.

Brex also delivers exclusive offers from various partners worth $180K+. That includes partner offers from Amazon Web Services, QuickBooks, UPS, Gusto, Slack, and more.

Brex delivers a suite of fintech tools to help companies manage their complex finances. Brex’s feature set is built around the goal of helping businesses track where and how employees spend money.

Here’s what you get with Brex:

• Free physical and virtual cards for employees
• Card controls that can be tailored for each subscription, vendor, and employee
• Spend tracking in real-time
• Mobile app for iOS and Android that lets you deposit checks, approve payments, and manage cards
• Receipt matching via the mobile app, text, and email
• Travel perks include 24/7 concierge assistance
• Automatic invoice payments
• Spend controls that include custom expense policies and alerts to help you manage employee spending

Brex’s base plan is free to use, with no annual or account fees, global ACH fees, or wire transfer fees. Employee cards are free, too. There’s a higher plan that costs $12/month that gives you access to advanced features like HRIS and live budgets.

Since Brex includes significant travel rewards, it’s important to note that you’ll pay $0 foreign transaction fees when you use the Brex card internationally. That compares favorably to BILL Spend & Expense’s 0.20%-0.90% currency conversion fee.

Unlike some corporate cards with complex rewards schemes and tiered rates, Ramp makes it simple. Every purchase you make with the Ramp credit card delivers up to 1.5% cash back. Rewards appear as a statement credit.

Ramp also offers users up to $175K in exclusive deals, discounts, and welcome offers from partners. These partners include Amazon Web Services, Slack, Rippling, Secureframe, Pulley, and more.

Ramp has a strong feature set and covers the main expense management features you’d expect with a corporate card, while throwing in several unique extras like savings insights and automations.

With Ramp, you’ll get:

• Unlimited physical and virtual cards for employees
• Daily, monthly, and one-time spending limits per card
• Mobile app for iOS devices
• Spend tracking
• Spend request tools that work via email, SMS, or Slack
• Out-of-pocket reimbursement requests
• Accounting integrations with NetSuite, Xero, QuickBooks, & Sage Intacct
• HR integrations to automate onboarding & sync employee details

One of Ramp’s best features is its pricing. Ramp is completely free. You will avoid all the most common fees, including setup fees, late fees, annual fees, foreign transaction fees, and employee card fees.

Compared to BILL Spend & Expense’s late fees and foreign transaction fees, businesses likely to encounter these fees could save a good amount of money with Ramp.

Rho offers up to 1.25% cash back for daily repayments and 1.00% cash back for monthly repayments. If you add Rho’s banking plans to your corporate card, you can find other perks like interest earning, accounting automations, and more.

Rho takes a slightly different approach, combining its corporate card with commercial banking and accounts payable services. Rho is not a bank and works with partner institutions to offer FDIC-insured banking services.

Here’s a roundup of Rho features:

• Physical and digital cards for employees
• Ability to add custom logo to cards
• Spending limits and restrictions
• Transfers and deposits to commercial bank accounts via ACH, wire transfer, mobile check deposit, and linked bank accounts
• Bill payment via automated accounts payable lets you receive, approve, code, and pay invoices within the Rho platform
• Global payments via fee-free USD wires to 161 countries, plus foreign transactions via global currencies with a 0.5% fee
• Auto-synced accounting with QuickBooks, Sage, and Wave via Plaid
• Spending categories

Overall, Rho offers relatively few fees. You’ll pay nothing for ACH deposits, domestic wires, international wires in USD, bill pay, additional cards, and card transactions domestically and internationally. Fees you may encounter include: a wire recall fee of $30, a 0.5% fee for wire transfers in foreign currencies, a potential 3% late fee.

When you choose American Express for your corporate credit card, you’re not locked into using one type of card exclusively. You can mix and match to meet your employees’ spending and travel habits. Each card has different rewards, including Hilton Honors status, flight discounts, Uber rewards, credits for services such as airline clubs and Global Entry, and cash rebates.

Your exact rewards scheme will be unique to your business and based on the combination of corporate cards you choose.

Every Amex corporate card account offers spending insights, employee limits, and flexible rewards.

Here is a rundown of Amex features:

• American Express @Work offers insight into employee spending and allows you to control it
• Flexible rewards can accrue to individual employees as cash back or points earned or as a monthly credit on the centrally billed statement
• A streamlined expense submission process
• Real-time alerts for unusual employee expenses
• Customized, industry-specific spending insights
• Virtual cards via American Express Go
• Automated Payment Solutions lets you earn rewards through accounts payable

American Express corporate cards come with annual fees ranging from $75-$550. Some Amex cards charge foreign transaction fees, while others do not.

• Corporate Green Card: $75 annual fee, aimed at employees who travel infrequently
• Corporate Gold Card: $250 annual fee, aimed at frequent travelers
• Corporate Platinum Card: $550 annual fee, aimed at senior executives and frequent travelers

Airbase promotes “unlimited cash back” but doesn’t give actual rates. The rewards are available on all purchases, regardless of category.

Airbase also partners with American Express, integrating Amex cards into the platform, so you can use Airbase without switching cards.

Airbase offers features in three areas: bill payment, corporate cards, and expense reimbursement. Using Airbase, the company claims, lets users add visibility and control across these areas, utilize automations, and clean up your possibly messy financial stack.

Here is a sampling of AirBase offers:

• Consolidation of all non-payroll expenses, including spending, purchase orders, invoices, and expense reimbursement
• Integrations with accounting software
• Make payments from one “command center” via check, ACH, card, international wire, and vendor credits
• Set expense policies and rules that the system can enforce
• Employee spending requests and reimbursement via workflows
• Automatic formation of audit trail
• Automated bill creation, categorization, payment scheduling, accruals, and amortizations
• Real-time reporting, with notifications via the web, email, mobile app, and Slack

You can use Airbase Essentials for $0/month. The Essentials version is aimed at companies with about 100 employees. Two paid versions, Growth and Enterprise, target companies with up to 500 and up to 3,000 employees. The paid versions unlock additional features, and pricing is available by custom quote only.