Dive Brief:

• American Express has agreed to purchase Center, a maker of expense-management software, to expand its offerings across commercial card payments and automated accounting, the card network said in a Thursday press release, creating what the bank called a “seamless expense management platform.”
• The deal is expected to close in the second quarter, AmEx said. Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed and Center’s 160 full-time employees will join American Express, an AmEx spokeswoman said Monday in an email.
• Center, which is based in Bellevue, Washington, was founded in 2017 by Naveen Singh and his father Steve, the co-founder of travel management company Concur Technologies. Software giant SAP acquired Concur for more than $8 billion in 2014.

Dive Insight:

Companies that spend on business travel have been seeking new ways to connect that purchasing with their expense-management and payments systems. More control and tracking can lead to lower travel costs and boost efficiency in terms of complying with a company’s agreements with airlines and hotel chains.

American Express offers expense management options through partnerships with Concur, Emburse and Neo1, spokeswoman Margaret Manning said. Integrating Center’s technology and employees will help “enhance” customers’ control of business spending, reduce non-compliant spending and streamline workflows, she said.

Center was established with the belief that expense management should be as “seamless as swiping a card,” Naveen Singh wrote Thursday in a company blog post. The company describes itself as “a card-first expense platform” with software that connects use of its credit card to a company’s payment platform, which allows Center customers to enforce their spending policies at the point of sale.

Center’s immediate accounting and audit functions are designed to eliminate traditional expense reports for business travelers. Finance teams at Center customers free up an average of 90% of the time previously spent on these tasks, according to the companies’ press release.

“We’ve always believed that card and expense should be deeply connected, giving businesses real-time visibility, control, and ease over how they manage spending,” Singh wrote. Becoming part of the large company will help Center “accelerate innovation” and expand its offerings, he said in the post.

Steve Singh, Center’s executive chairman, is also a managing director at Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle-based investment firm. 

Last year, he included Center as one of four companies comprising his vision of assembling companies that could marry new technologies to create a seamless business travel experience, reducing the traditional hassles and frictions road warriors encounter.

Singh’s goal is “igniting a revolution in corporate travel,” he wrote in April 2024 when he led an investor group to acquire Denver-based Direct Travel, a travel management company that serves about 4,500 medium and small businesses.

Along with Direct Travel, Singh and Madrona are knitting together startup Spotnana, a travel-as-a-service company, to provide access to airline and hotel content for bookings; Troop, a meetings and events platform to plan, book, manage and expense group meetings; and Center’s expense-management solution. 

Steve Singh is interim CEO at Spotnana and executive chairman of Center, Troop and Direct Travel.

Center’s purchase by American Express will not affect its relationship with Spotnana or the other Madrona-led companies, Steve Singh said in a statement to Business Travel News last week.