Financial services executives see Capital One’s planned acquisition of AI driven spend management and business banking service provider Brex as good for the industry. 

“Increasingly companies see financial services and software as a one-stop solution,” Andrew Jamison, chief executive officer of spend and expense management service provider Extend, told FinAi News. Extend is a spend management service provider and boasts partners like HSBC, American Express and BMO.

“The acquisition is a net good [for the industry] and a broad realization from banks that if you want to be a major player, you need to control the end-to-end application,” he added. 

Capital One’s $5.15 billion cash and stock deal for Brex, announced Jan 22, is expected to close by mid-year, according to a bank release. 

Acquiring vendors like Brex allows banks to gain AI tech, an existing customer base and fast track those offerings to bank customers, Jamison said. Financial institutions are looking to team with companies like Extend to bring business banking consumers deeper into their infrastructure, he said. 

The $63 billion PNC, for example, entered into a partnership with Extend last year to provide its services to the bank’s business clients, Jamison said. Extend is also working with four other top U.S. banks to provide them with spend management tools, he added without naming the banks. 

What Brex brings to Cap One 

“Acquiring Brex builds on and accelerates a journey we’ve been on since our founding days,” Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank said during the bank’s fourth-quarter earnings call last week.  

Business payments have been a growing part of the $652 billion bank’s strategy and investment agenda, he said.  

“Brex invented the integrated combination of business credit cards, spend management software and banking together in a single platform,” Fairbank noted on the call, adding that these innovations played into Capital One’s decision to make the acquisition. 

The bank said in its earnings presentation that Brex’s AI tools will help it to: 

• Deploy AI agents for complex workflows; 

• Use AI for automated expense filings; and 

• Detect fraud. 

AI and business banking 

The business credit card market is growing at about 9% annually as business payments continue the secular migration from cash and checks to digital payments, Fairbanks said.  

“Brex is taking share from banks and software providers alike,” he noted. 

Brex built a full tech stack from the bottom up. Fairbank said, adding that its card and banking businesses run on an in-house, fully modern core that are 100% in the cloud. 

Spend management companies are using AI to improve their offerings and provide an intuitive product to businesses, Extend’s Jamison told FinAi News. Extend itself launched AI-driven solutions in 2025 that can automate codifying an employee’s transactions. 

One main AI use case for Brex is for business policy controls, for example to flag certain employee transactions during off hours or to halt a transaction in real time that does not meet company policy, Jamison said. 

Similarly, Extend is using AI for software development internally, Jamison said, adding that the company currently uses Anthropic and OpenAI’s ChatGPT for its gen AI needs. 

An open regulatory window 

Mega banks like Capital One are an example of how a financial institution can use strategic M&A to grow their books and expand their portfolio, Jamison said. 

The financial services industry has seen the following, similar deals recently: 

• JPMorgan acquiring the U.K.-based pensions technology platform WealthOS in 2026; 
• Lloyds acquires payments aggregator Curve in 2025;  
• ERP provider Sage acquired spend management company Fyle in 2025; 
• Accounting company Xero’s acquisition of payments company Melio in 2025;
• Capital One’s acquisition of Discover in 2025; and
• Paylocity’s acquisition of spend management company Airbase in 2024.

Acquisitions that give banks the opportunity to expand their business models to capabilities that include payments or blockchain will be beneficial and looked upon favorably by shareholders, Chris Stanley, Industry practice lead instead at data analytics firm Moody’s Analytics, told FinAi News.  

“Just taking two banks and making them one bigger bank, it’s not going to work long term,” he said. “Just making banks bigger makes people scratch their heads.” 

Banks also realize that there is a window of opportunity with the current administration’s drive for deregulation and being more relaxed on M&A activity, Stanley said. 

“There has been a lot of effort to shift the emphasis of regulation toward a more principles-based approach and away from a more rules-based approach,” Stanley said, adding that such regulations give financial institutions more leeway to put their money to work. 

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