Since its launch in 2018, Brex has transformed from a company offering corporate credit cards for startups to a company offering comprehensive financial solutions for modern businesses of all sizes.
More than 35,000 businesses, including more than 150 publicly traded companies, in more than 120 countries trust Brex to power key parts of their financial infrastructure. Brex offers a wide range of services, including corporate cards with built-in controls and credit limits up to 40 times higher than those offered by traditional banks.
In addition to credit cards, Brex offers business bank accounts with impressive interest rates and AI-powered vendor payments, automated expense reports, and AI-driven accounting support. It has also built a proprietary software and payment infrastructure.
Brex’s automation tools save companies an average of 4,250 hours per year, but the company was still facing a major accounting challenge of its own: sales tax compliance.
Why Brex needed support for sales tax compliance
Brex is growing quickly; it increased revenue by 80% year-over-year in 2025. And it has become a global solution, expanding into new regions and serving many large and fast-growing enterprises.
And while rapid scaling is generally a good thing, it also introduces significant challenges related to complying with sales tax, VAT, and GST regulations. Like all companies that sell in multiple U.S. states or foreign countries, Brex must ensure that it:
- Tracks nexus to understand its sales tax, VAT, and GST obligations. In the United States, a company becomes responsible for registering with a state and collecting sales tax if it establishes a physical presence there, or if its sales revenue or number of sales reaches a certain threshold. Thresholds and specific nexus rules vary by state. In other countries, including many in the EU, VAT (or GST) collection obligations may begin immediately upon selling in a new location.
- Registers when required: Once a business has established nexus in a jurisdiction, it is required to register with local tax authorities. This can be more complicated than it seems. Registering in EU countries may sometimes require the appointment of a local fiscal representative.
- Collects the correct sales tax. Brex offers its customers a variety of products and services, including business banking services and expense management software. The nature of its products creates complexities: some jurisdictions tax digital goods and SaaS (software as a service), while others don't, and because these products are relatively new, rules governing their taxation are still evolving.
- Files and remits sales tax, VAT, or GST. Depending on the volume and/or number of sales in a location, Brex may be required to file and remit sales tax returns and payments there monthly, quarterly, biannually, or annually.
- Complies with local rules and requirements. With customers in more than 120 countries, Brex must know and comply with many different rules, from how sales tax is handled in home rule states in the U.S. to how the reverse charge mechanism affects their tax collection obligations in the EU.
- Remains audit-ready. This means keeping detailed accounting records, keeping exemption certificates on file, and ensuring that the correct tax amounts are collected on products that may be taxed differently in different jurisdictions.
The larger a company's global presence, the more complicated these tasks become, and this was the major accounting challenge Brex was facing before it found Numeral.
"As Brex grows, we're serving more and more companies that are based all over the world," explained Art Levy, Brex’s chief business officer and the person in charge of overseeing sales partnerships and corporate development functions.
"Those companies are opening offices in even more regions, and we're serving new companies,” he said. “Because of this global tax compliance problem, we need to be able to calculate the sales tax in every country for all of our customers, regardless of whether they're based in that country or they just have a subsidiary in that country. And Brex, as a business, really wants to be international and serve international companies."
Levy explained that Brex urgently needed a way to manage sales tax, VAT, and GST calculation for more than 35,000 customers worldwide, regardless of where they were based, all while continuing to focus on growing and building its core product.
Numeral is a sales tax solution with built-in global support
Brex found the partner it was looking for in Numeral.
"Brex uses Numeral to help with global tax compliance," Levy said. "We serve companies all over the world. Numeral helps us calculate the global taxes for those customers, so we can focus on what we do best, which is building spend management software and corporate card software."
Numeral's tax calculation engine integrates directly with Brex's sales platforms and accounting software to calculate tax in real-time, with rooftop-level location accuracy.
The tax engine applies the correct tax rules and tax rates for SaaS and other products and services across jurisdictions, ensuring that Brex collects the right amount of tax due from customers.
Numeral also tracks the company's sales, alerts Brex when it's approaching a nexus threshold, and automatically registers and files for the company once it establishes nexus and thus becomes responsible for sales tax compliance in a new location.
"Companies headquartered in London, the EU, in Canada, or in the U.S., we need to be able to calculate their global tax needs. Numeral provides solutions within Brex's spend-management software so we can continue to serve global businesses in the best way," said Levy.
Why Brex chose Numeral instead of legacy tools
Numeral wasn't the only sales tax solution Brex considered, but it was the only one Brex found that could support its rapid growth and offer the modern solutions the revolutionary fintech company was looking for.
"Numeral has a much better user experience. Full stop. There were a ton of legacy tax software tools that we could have used, as well as a number of new disruptors in the space, and Numeral stood head and shoulders above the rest, not only in the product that they built, but also in the usability of it," Levy said.
Key features that set Numeral apart included:
Efficiency
Numeral is a true AI-native platform that automates the entire sales tax lifecycle. It was designed from the ground up to support the needs of SaaS and e-commerce businesses operating in the global economy in the post-Wayfair era.
This makes Numeral more efficient and more effective at helping modern businesses fulfill their tax obligations. The software and solutions were created with their needs in mind: Numeral leverages agentic workflows to enable companies to manage sales tax, VAT, and GST in a few minutes a month.
"We're completely hands off," Levy explained. "We focus on growing our business, and Numeral handles compliance. Without Numeral, we would not be able to move as fast as we do."
Integrations
Levy stressed that it was important for Brex to have a deeply embedded solution to make both setup and ongoing operations easy. "You can't have a tool that is separate from the workflows of the team," he said. "It needs to be deeply embedded."
Numeral fits the bill, as it integrates with major ERPs, billing systems, and accounting software. These integrations eliminate tedious work and reduce the risk of human error.
"What's important for the next generation of tools is to really plug into the existing workflows of customers," Levy said. “Numeral plugs into our entire software stack, so my finance team doesn't have to worry about manual reconciliation at the end of each month.”
Human expertise
Numeral isn't just an automated platform. A U.S.-based tax expert reviews every return, and Numeral offers dedicated human support to Brex, provided by a knowledge team of tax professionals.
"The Numeral team has been fantastic," Levy said. "It's been an extremely high-touch white-glove experience. Unlike other solutions, Numeral offers an end-to-end platform. They know how to answer all of our questions. They're ready at any time, 24/7. It's just been a completely different experience than with other legacy tax compliance tools.”
Numeral is the partner of choice for modern businesses
Numeral has delivered real results for Brex, Levy reports that the finance team saves around 20 hours per month thanks to the partnership.
He praised Numeral for turning a manual, error-prone process into an effortless one, and explained that Numeral gives him the confidence that everything will be reconciled perfectly at the end of the month.
Of course, this is all backed by Numeral's guarantee: If an error on our part leads to late filings or penalties in an audit, we'll cover the fees, the penalties, and any extra filing costs.
With Numeral's help, Brex doesn’t have to manually handle sales tax, knowing it's handled for them, and focus on perfecting its own finance solutions for businesses across the globe so it can continue its explosive growth.
"Numeral has the industry-leading AI-native tax engine that calculates accurate sales tax rates in all of our markets," Levy said. "As Brex grows, we need infrastructure that scales with us. Numeral makes sales tax compliance something we don't have to stress about. Don't let legacy infrastructure slow you down. Scale up with Numeral.”
