Dive Brief:

• Business-to-business card company Pex said Tuesday it raised $160 million in debt and equity financing from a private equity firm to help expand its commercial card and spend-management services. Pex declined to reveal the split between debt and equity, a spokesperson said.
• Bluff Point Associates, which invests in financial technology and healthcare tech companies, made the investment, New York City-based Pex said in a press release.
• Pex will use the investment to accelerate its product innovation and invest in sales, partnerships and strategic growth, according to the press release. “For too long, sophisticated financial tools were reserved for large enterprises,” Pex’s founder and CEO, Toffer Grant, said in the release. “We’re changing that by combining payments, credit, spend management and automation into a single platform that helps businesses operate with greater control and confidence.”

Dive Insight:

Customers increasingly want “integrated solutions rather than fragmented financial tools,” Pex said in the press release. Pex is building out “an all-in-one platform for payments, spend management, credit and financial automation,” according to the press release. 

Pex has raised about $180 million in equity and debt since 2010, according to Crunchbase data.

Pex is a business-to-business spend management platform focused on smaller- and medium-sized companies in industries such as construction, nonprofits, business services and media and entertainment, Grant wrote on his LinkedIn page.

Pex began operating in 2009, issuing prepaid corporate charge cards for smaller businesses, the CEO wrote in a Tuesday LinkedIn post. The company said it has managed about $11.7 billion in corporate spending over that time.

Grant said that experience issuing prepaid cards has prepared Pex for combining all of the payments, card and spend services for its corporate customers. Pex’s cards include prepaid, charge, disbursement and virtual cards.

Pex added credit cards to its product roster two years ago “when customers wanted the same control over spend a prepaid balance couldn’t carry,” he added. Pex’s credit offerings come with weekly or monthly repayment periods.

Bluff Point, which is based in Westport, Connecticut, seeks businesses with “strong customer retention, recurring revenue characteristics and clear competitive differentiation," the firm’s CEO, Tom McInerney, said in the press release.

Pex says on its website that it has about 10,000 customers, including live-events ticket company Live Nation, consumer goods purveyor Tory Burch and emergency response and cleaning company Servpro.