If you own a business that is registered in the U.S. as a LLC, LLP, C-corp, or S-corp, I think you’d be nuts to ignore the Brex Cash offer: 110K transferable points without a credit inquiry. Brex Cash is like a business checking account, but it’s not really a checking account. And it comes with a Brex card that’s like a debit card, but it’s not really a debit card. The account is 100% free and doesn’t lead to a credit inquiry. Here are the details of the signup offer:
- 80,000 point bonus for signing up through One Mile at a Time and spending $1,000 on your new Brex card.
- 10,000 additional points after spending $3,000 on your Brex Card in the first 3 months.
- 20,000 bonus points when you deposit sales revenue or link payroll to your Brex Cash account.
The first two points above seem simple enough. Use your Brex card to make enough purchases and you should qualify. Personally, I’ve completed $3,000 spend, but haven’t received either the 80K or 10K bonus yet, but I’m not worried. I’m sure it will come through eventually.
The third component of the offer is the most confusing. Earn 20K bonus points when you “deposit sales revenue or link payroll to your Brex Cash account.” What does that mean? How would Brex know if a deposit came from sales revenue? What does it mean to “link payroll”? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know what I did to earn the 20,000 points. I simply moved some money from my Paypal account to my Brex account and bam! There it was…
Here is what Brex’s website says about how to qualify for the 20K bonus:
Deposit sales revenue or run payroll with Brex Cash to earn 20,000 points.
Payroll providers: ADP, Deel, Extensis, Gusto, Insperity, Intuit Payroll, Justworks, Paychex, Paylocity, Rippling, Sure Payroll, TriNet, WageWorks, Workday, Your People.
Ecommerce platforms or payment gateways: Amazon, BigCommerce, Braintree, PayPal, Shopify, Square, Stripe, Venmo, Wix, Xoom.
Brex reserves the right to modify the list of eligible platforms at any time.
As you can see above, there seem to be quite a few ways to make this happen. In this post, I’ll detail exactly how I did it…
Step 1: I moved some money into my Paypal account
I have a business Paypal account that I use for some business transactions. It didn’t currently have any money in it, so I moved $250 from another account so that I’d have money to move into Brex.
I doubt it is necessary to use a business Paypal account for this purpose, but I don’t know for sure whether a personal account would work. Update: Readers have confirmed that a business Paypal account isn’t necessary. A personal Paypal account will work the same way as described here.
Step 2: I found my Brex bank, routing number, and account number
After logging into my Brex account, I clicked “Cash” from the leftmost menu and then under Account Details, I clicked “View details”. That brought me to a pop-up that showed my Brex routing number, account number, and bank name (Radius Bank).
Step 3: I added my Brex account to my Paypal wallet
Within Paypal, I found the option to link bank accounts and I added my Brex account. I entered my routing number and account number and select my business for the Account name.
Paypal wasn’t able to link the accounts automatically, so I let it send two test deposits in order to verify the account.
Step 4: Verify account
After a few days, I logged into Brex to see if the test deposits were there. I looked under Cash… Transactions (these deposits won’t show up as credit card transactions). Sure enough, I found two small deposits and one withdrawal from PayPal.
I then logged back into PayPal, and verified my Brex account with the amounts from the two test deposits.
Step 5: Push money to Brex
Update: This last step isn’t necessary! Multiple people have confirmed that the act of PayPal sending trial deposits when verifying the account (as described above) is enough to trigger the 20K bonus.
Finally, from PayPal, I selected Transfer Money and I moved the $250 to Brex using the fee-free ACH option. A day later, the money appeared in my Brex Cash account. Two days after that I received an email from Brex congratulating me for earning 20,000 bonus points!
Conclusion
I’m sure there are many ways to earn the 20K Brex bonus. Above I’ve described in detail the way I did it. It turned out that simply pushing money to Brex from PayPal was enough to trigger the bonus.
See also: Brex Bonus: 110K transferable points without a credit inquiry
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I just got my final approval for a Brex Cash account which took around 75 days to occur. I confirmed via email that I was still eligible for the OMAAT bonus offering. I went through the process of linking my personal PayPal account with Brex and it went through without a hitch so no need for trial deposits. Has anyone had this occur and still receive the 20K bonus points? If not I will move some funds.
Did you end up getting the 20K bonus from the PayPal link up without a hitch? I had same thing. Did you have to move funds to trigger it?
Been trying to get my Paypal linked for a few weeks now, can’t get them connected. Brex showed up last week as a bank but they wouldn’t link. Now they don’t show up as a bank and won’t link with Routing/Acct#’s. Any other easy ways to get the 20k bonus?
Hi Guys,
How long did it take for the deposits to go through? I keep trying to link my business PayPal and it won’t allow me to login, even though the names are correct and my business PayPal is legit, keep getting an error. Clicked the link where it will send two deposits to verify. Any idea how long the deposits take to show up? Thanks again for any answers.
Curious if you could use the card at an ATM like a debit card, and withdraw cash to do the spend? Since it’s not really a credit card, there shouldn’t be a cash advance fee…
No, you can’t. It’s like a credit card in all ways except that it doesn’t extend credit. It is not recognized as a debit card and you don’t get a PIN
There is a PIN on the physical card, but I’m not sure why there is one.
Here’s another data point: I was approved for the Brex cash account. I started following your instructions in order to fund the cash account so I could start charging on the credit card. I transferred $3000 from my personal checking account to the Brex account, and also transferred $1000 from my business checking account to the Brex account. I didn’t even fund my PayPal account yet, so the only transfer(s) into Brex were from my checking accounts. And then I received an email saying that I got the 20k points!
Here’s what the email said:
Congrats! You just earned 20,000 bonus rewards points for depositing sales revenue or running payroll with Brex Cash.
FYI!
Direct deposit from Amazon triggered the 20K bonus.
Good to know!
Is brex fdic insured ? Is it a bank?
Yes it is FDIC insured, but no Brex is not a bank. Details here: https://www.brex.com/posts/brex-cash-fdic/
I can confirm that this works exactly as described with a personal PayPal account. Just got my confirmation email for 20,000 points today!
Is your business name the same as your name on your personal account? Brian (above) seemed to have issues linking his personal paypal account because his business had a different name.
No, my business name is different, although Brex also has my name.
Thanks for confirming!
I’m a real sole prop with a real business. Declined. Applied as LLC. Uploaded proof of EIN and was approved. Technically I’m not a real LLC but I am a real business.
I was approved for Brex about a week ago with an LLC that I had registered on that same day. My approval was conditional upon uploading a certificate of good standing, which thankfully was free in my state.
Here’s an interesting datapoint though: I linked my business Paypal account to Brex but have not yet moved any cash from the Paypal into Brex. I received an email just now that I have received the 20,000 point bonus for depositing sales revenue. The only transactions on the account are the verification deposits from Chase, a small ACH transfer from Chase, and the verification deposits from Paypal (all from yesterday). It looks to me like the verification deposits from Paypal were enough to trigger the 20,000 point bonus.
Same here. The verification deposits from paypal trigger the 20k. I’d still deposit something else from paypal though to not upset Brex. It sounds like if they don’t like you, they really don’t like you.
Still waiting on the Brex card to come in the mail. Is there any reason to think you couldn’t go ahead and check off the “sales revenue” bit first? Better yet, anyone have a data point?
I did it all before getting the card in the mail. I did all the spend too using the virtual card number you can get right away online.
Greg, I have an EIN through my sole proprietorship & I recently applied to turn it into an LLC – application still being processed by the state. Do you think it’s worth trying for the Brex deal? Even though LLC hasn’t been approved yet?
same question
Sorry, I don’t know
I tried. They asked me for proof of EIN which I sent in but haven’t heard back. It’s been almost a week.
I sent in my proof of EIN which is the first document the IRS sends you with the business name and EIN number and was approved today.
I got an error on Paypal saying “Sorry, we can’t link your bank account right now.”
Turns out the issue was that my personal Paypal account had my name while the Brex account is titled with my business name, so Paypal wouldn’t link them up. I started a business Paypal and all seems to be swell.
They said I didn’t qualify
My LLC is legal and my credit excellent
Sorry to hear that. I don’t know why they deny some people.
Thanks Greg! I was trying to figure out how I would get this portion done. Really appreciate the explicit details!