The US lender is buying a corporate card and spend platform at a steep discount to its boom-time valuation. The bigger question is what banks think they are really purchasing: customers, deposits — or control of the software layer.
On Thursday, January 22, Capital One said it had agreed to buy Brex for $5.15bn, in a deal split between cash and shares and expected to close in the middle of calendar 2026.
It is an unusually blunt signal that the long “partnership era” between banks and fintechs is giving way to something more direct: absorption.
