PEX, a corporate card and spend management platform founded 20 years ago, has secured $160m in debt and equity financing to help small businesses modernise their finances ahead of a looming wave of ownership transitions.
The round was led by Bluff Point Associates, with the credit drawn by customers of the company’s charge card programme funded through a facility provided by Clear Haven Capital Management.
The raise arrives against the backdrop of what has been dubbed the Silver Tsunami, the largest generational transfer of business ownership on record.
With around 11,000 Americans turning 65 every day, millions of owners are preparing to exit this decade, and McKinsey estimates the sellable portion of these firms is worth roughly $5tn. Yet the same research suggests 92% of these businesses end in closure rather than sale, often because outdated back offices, from paper receipts to monthly closes that take weeks, scare buyers away during due diligence.
PEX plans to channel the new capital into three areas. The first is scaling its charge card programme, which has delivered sustained triple-digit growth since launching in 2024.
The second is a significant push into AI designed to remove manual finance work, including receipt matching, expense coding, account reconciliation, card ordering and balance management. The third is investment in its people, allowing the firm to reach more owners hoping to hand over the keys rather than shut their doors.
The company began two decades ago issuing pre-funded prepaid cards, developing granular controls that can restrict spending to a single card, site, merchant, state or even time of day. It has since expanded into charge cards and disbursements, with all three now running on one platform under a unified set of controls. To date, PEX customers have moved over $11.7bn through the platform.
Supporting the AI investment, a Forrester study conducted late last year modelled a composite PEX customer with $25m in revenue and 130 staff.
The analysis found the firm’s existing AI and automation capabilities returned 8,700 hours over three years, cut a monthly close from seven or eight hours to minutes, and avoided roughly $209,000 in hiring costs within around $1.1m of total value.
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