How AI-Powered Commercial Finance Is Reshaping Banking: The Fifth Third and Brex Initiative

The financial services landscape is undergoing a significant transformation. Fifth Third Bank and Brex have announced a strategic multi-year partnership designed to modernize commercial banking through intelligent automation and AI-native financial tools. The collaboration unlocks approximately $5.6 billion in annual commercial card payment volume and marks a pivotal moment in how enterprises approach spend management and financial operations.

Breaking the Mold of Traditional Commercial Banking

For generations, commercial finance teams have grappled with persistent operational bottlenecks. Companies struggle with fragmented visibility into spending patterns, inflexible systems that cannot adapt to growth, and countless hours consumed by manual reconciliation tasks. The traditional approach—where finance professionals manually track expenses and balance budgets—remains error-prone and fundamentally inefficient. This antiquated workflow not only slows decision-making but also increases compliance risk.

The Fifth Third and Brex partnership directly addresses these pain points. By leveraging Brex’s proprietary API-driven payments infrastructure—known as Brex Embedded—the institutions are creating a unified solution that fundamentally reimagines the commercial card experience. The resulting platform combines Fifth Third Bank’s institutional banking strength with Brex’s AI-driven technology stack.

What Makes This Partnership Significant

This is not merely a product integration. The scope is substantial: Fifth Third represents approximately 8% of the U.S. commercial banking sector. This means Brex gains access to a massive client base virtually overnight, enabling the deployment of agentic finance solutions at unprecedented scale. Simultaneously, Fifth Third’s Commercial Banking clients receive access to next-generation tools previously available only to venture-backed startups and tech-forward enterprises.

The Fifth Third Commercial Card powered by Brex becomes the default offering for the bank’s commercial clients. Through this solution, finance teams can issue corporate cards, automate expense workflows, execute secure real-time payments, and leverage AI agents that handle complex operational tasks. These agents accelerate month-end close procedures, minimize manual review cycles, and enforce spend controls automatically.

The Technology Behind the Shift

At its core, this partnership represents a fundamental reimagining of how commercial finance software should function. Rather than requiring teams to input data manually and chase approvals through email chains, the platform integrates AI across every workflow. Receipts are processed automatically, accounting entries are generated intelligently, and anomalies are flagged proactively.

For finance leaders, this means reclaiming hundreds of hours previously lost to administrative work. Teams can redirect attention toward strategic initiatives—analyzing cash flow patterns, optimizing vendor relationships, and planning growth—rather than maintaining spreadsheets.

The global scalability component is equally critical. Companies operating across multiple markets gain consistent financial tools, unified reporting, and standardized controls. This matters enormously for mid-market and enterprise organizations that have historically struggled to maintain coherent finance operations across geographies.

Market Implications and Strategic Context

Fifth Third Bank brings more than a century of banking heritage to this collaboration. The institution has consistently positioned itself as a pioneer in financial innovation, earning recognition as one of the few major U.S. banks to be named among Ethisphere’s World’s Most Ethical Companies multiple times. This credibility matters when deploying cutting-edge finance technology to commercial clients who prioritize institutional stability.

Brex, meanwhile, has built its reputation on serving companies that demand speed, control, and automation. The platform already operates in 120 countries and serves over 35,000 companies, ranging from startups to enterprises. Notable clients include Anthropic, Arm, ServiceTitan, and Robinhood. The partnership with Fifth Third represents a logical next step: extending intelligent finance capabilities to established enterprises through a trusted regional bank partner.

From a market perspective, this collaboration sends a clear signal. AI-powered finance is no longer confined to venture-backed fintechs or Fortune 500 companies with unlimited technology budgets. It is becoming the standard for commercial banking. Institutions that cannot offer these capabilities risk becoming obsolete within the next 3-5 years.

Deployment and Rollout Strategy

Brex will be deployed across all markets where Fifth Third operates, ensuring nationwide coverage. This geographic breadth is significant; it means that companies operating in different regions will have consistent access to the same intelligent finance platform. The rollout eliminates the fragmentation that has historically plagued commercial banking.

For businesses, the practical benefit is immediate: they operate smarter, compete globally with greater confidence, and grow faster due to reduced administrative friction. Finance teams gain real-time visibility into corporate spending, something many mid-market companies have lacked despite paying substantial fees to traditional providers.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Commercial Finance

This partnership exemplifies a broader industry trend. Commercial finance platforms are becoming smarter, more integrated, and increasingly AI-native. The days of segregated systems—separate cards, accounting software, expense platforms, and banking relationships—are ending.

What Fifth Third and Brex are launching represents the new standard: unified platforms where corporate cards, treasury management, expense automation, bill pay, and accounting seamlessly integrate. AI handles the operational complexity, eliminating manual intervention wherever possible.

For companies currently evaluating their finance infrastructure, this development carries important implications. The competitive advantage increasingly goes to organizations that embrace intelligent automation. Those that continue relying on disconnected tools and manual processes will find themselves at a strategic disadvantage.

The $5.6 billion in annual commercial card volume represents just the initial wave. As this partnership matures and additional features roll out, the platform’s impact on commercial banking will only expand. For more information about Brex’s capabilities and partnership opportunities, interested parties can visit brex.com to explore how intelligent finance is transforming the industry.