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Center belongs to American Express

Center expense management software after the American Express acquisition: pricing, reviews and alternatives

American Express completed its acquisition of Center on April 16, 2025. Since then the product you would have bought has quietly stopped being sold the way it was: getcenter.com is a login and support portal, the pricing and demo pages are gone, and the replacement platform is in early access. This page lays out what is verifiable, what it costs, and what to buy instead.

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See which charges would have paged a budget owner

Set team budgets, replay 30 days of card spend for a company profile, and watch the 80% warnings and 100% breaches fire. It behaves the same whether the card in question is a CenterCard, an Amex commercial card, or whatever you move to next.

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Short answer

What is Center expense management, and can you still buy it?

Center is a card-first expense platform founded in 2018 in Bellevue, Washington, that paired its own corporate card with real-time expense capture and coding. American Express bought it, completing the deal on April 16, 2025, and is folding the technology into an Amex expense platform that began early access with select customers in summer 2026. Center never published a price, and today getcenter.com has no pricing, product or demo page at all. If you are shopping now rather than renewing, the practical answer is to compare platforms that publish their pricing: Ramp at $0 and $15 per user, Brex at $0 and $12 per user, Expensify at $5 and $18 per member, Navan free up to 300 employees. If the job you actually need done is being told when a budget is about to break, that costs far less than replacing a whole spend platform.

The event

What the American Express acquisition changed for Center customers

Every row below is taken from American Express investor relations releases or from what getcenter.com serves today. No guesses about a roadmap nobody outside Amex has seen.

Swipe the table sideways to compare all columns.

When What happened What it means for you
March 6, 2025 Amex announces it will acquire Center, describing it as a software company modernizing expense management for small to medium-sized businesses. The independent vendor you were evaluating is about to become a line of business inside a card issuer.
April 16, 2025 The acquisition completes. Amex says the goal is a card-based expense platform that automates the process from policy setup, to point of spend, to accounting. Read the phrase card-based carefully. The strategy is explicitly built around Amex commercial cards.
March 25, 2026 Amex announces eight commercial products in one year, including new expense management software built on the Center acquisition, connecting to accounting, ERP and HR systems. Early access for select customers from summer 2026, folded into a new Corporate Cash Back Card program in the fall. No published price.
Today getcenter.com serves a login, card-activation and support portal. The pricing, product, solutions, about and demo pages redirect away or return 404. You cannot self-serve a price, book a demo or read the feature list. For a buyer comparing vendors this quarter, that is the whole story.

Why this can be good news

A venture-funded expense startup is a riskier long-term bet than the same software owned by one of the largest commercial card issuers in the United States. If your company already runs an Amex corporate or business card program, having the expense layer built by the issuer removes the single most common implementation blocker we see, which is getting a clean transaction feed out of the card program in the first place.

Why it is worth a second look

Center sold to any small or mid-sized business regardless of which card it carried. The new platform is being introduced alongside Amex card products and a new Corporate Cash Back Card. If your program sits with Chase, Capital One, Citi or a regional bank, you are not the buyer the launch is aimed at, and a platform that reads any card feed will serve you better.

What it costs

How much does Center expense management cost?

There is no published Center price, there never was one, and getcenter.com no longer has a pricing page for us to check. Center was sold on a quote in which the software and the CenterCard program came together, which is the normal shape of a card-first deal: the issuer earns interchange on the spend, so the software line can be small or even nominal, and the real commercial terms live in the card agreement.

That matters more than it sounds. When software revenue is subsidised by card spend, the quote you are shown is contingent on your company routing spend through that card. Move less volume than forecast, add a second entity that keeps its own bank card, or let a department stay on its old program, and the economics that produced the quote no longer hold. Ask what happens to the rate if card volume lands 30% below plan, and get the answer in writing.

If you are being quoted an Amex expense platform today, ask for three numbers as separate line items: the software fee per user or per month, the implementation and data-migration fee, and the cap on the annual increase. With those three you can compare against Ramp pricing, Brex pricing, Expensify pricing and Navan pricing in about ten minutes. Without them you are comparing a bundle to a price list, which is not a comparison at all.

The detail everyone gets wrong

What card does Center actually use?

The CenterCard Corporate Credit Card is issued by Comdata, Inc. under a license from Mastercard. That is stated on getcenter.com today, after the acquisition. So the platform American Express bought runs its own card on Mastercard rails, while the expense product Amex is building is described around Amex commercial cards. Those are two different card programs, and the difference decides how painful your next eighteen months look.

If you carry CenterCards today

Nothing has been announced that forces a change, and the cards keep working. The question to put to your account contact is simple: is the CenterCard program continuing, and for how long. Get the answer before you sign anything with a multi-year term.

If you run Amex commercial cards

You are the target buyer for the new platform and the transaction feed should be the easy part. Our Amex expense management page covers which Amex card types produce a usable feed, because not all of them do.

If your cards are somewhere else

A card-first platform asks you to move your card program to get its best behaviour. That is a far bigger project than a software swap. Price the migration, not the licence, and read our corporate card monitoring page for the card-agnostic route.

Center alternatives, side by side

Center expense management alternatives compared on price and card rules

Prices are what each vendor publishes on its own pricing page, re-checked in September 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the cell says so instead of repeating an estimate.

Swipe the table sideways to compare all columns.

Platform Published price Card rules Best for
Center (American Express) None published, and no pricing page remains. Quoted with the card program CenterCard, issued by Comdata on Mastercard; the new Amex platform is built around Amex commercial cards Companies whose card program already sits with American Express
Ramp Free at $0 per user; Plus at $15 per user per month plus a platform fee based on team size Controls work on Ramp-issued cards Mid-market teams willing to move cards who want a published price
Brex, a Capital One company Essentials at $0 per user; Premium at $12 per user per month; Enterprise on quote Brex card, subject to eligibility checks Funded startups and scale-ups, especially multi-entity
Expensify Collect at $5 per unique member per month; Control at $18 per active member per month on annual Card-agnostic for receipts and reimbursement Keeping your current cards and fixing the receipt process only
Navan Business free up to 300 employees, no per-trip fees; Navan Expense free for the first 5 monthly users then $15 per user per month Navan card, or outside cards through Navan Connect Travel-heavy companies wanting booking and expense together
SAP Concur No list price. Third-party benchmark data puts contracts roughly between $1,832 and $45,132 a year Card-agnostic, with issuer feeds set up per program Large, policy-heavy programs with international travel
SpendNotify Flat: $199, $449 or $999 per month for the whole company; Enterprise on quote Issues nothing; reads the cards and accounts you already keep Real-time budget and anomaly alerts next to whatever platform you choose

Ramp does not publish the Plus platform fee. Brex eligibility depends on funding, revenue or headcount. Full working on SAP Concur pricing and the best spend management software roundup.

Wait, move, or do neither

Should you wait for the new American Express expense platform?

Early access with select customers is not general availability, and a product without a published price cannot be put in a business case. Here is how the decision usually breaks.

Wait if

Your Amex commercial card program is how the company pays for most things, your current expense process is irritating rather than broken, and you have no renewal or audit deadline before the platform reaches general availability. Ask your Amex account team to put you in the early access group and ask for indicative pricing in writing while you wait.

Move if

You have a decision this quarter, you run cards at more than one issuer, you need multiple legal entities supported now, or your auditors have flagged the receipt trail. Published per-user pricing lets you build the business case today, and platforms like Expensify and Navan Expense let you do it without touching your card program.

Do neither if

The only real complaint is that overspend turns up at month-end. Replacing an expense platform to fix late information is an expensive way to buy a notification. Put an alerting layer over the cards you already hold, keep the expense tool you have, and revisit the platform question when the new one has a price.

What we are and are not

Where SpendNotify fits, and where it does not

SpendNotify is not affiliated with Center or American Express, and this page is not an Amex product page. We issue no card, hold no funds and cannot decline a transaction at the point of sale. If blocking a charge before it clears is your requirement, you need a platform that issues the card, and that means Ramp, Brex, Navan or whatever Amex ships.

What SpendNotify does is the part every one of those platforms treats as a reporting feature. It connects read-only to the card and bank feeds you already have, checks every charge against budgets you set per team, person, vendor and category, projects where the month is heading, and messages the budget owner by email, SMS or Slack while there is still time to act. It runs next to Center, next to an Amex platform, or next to nothing at all, and it is priced flat per month rather than per user, so adding the whole finance team costs nothing extra.

During a platform change it earns its keep twice over. For the month or two when some spend is on the old cards and some on the new, it is the only place both feeds show up against one budget. More on the mechanism on our budget alerts page.

Questions people actually ask

Center expense management questions

Who owns Center expense management?

American Express owns Center. Amex announced the acquisition on March 6, 2025 and completed it on April 16, 2025, according to its own investor relations releases. Center was founded in 2018 in Bellevue, Washington as a card-first expense platform, and its technology now sits behind the expense management software Amex is rolling out to commercial customers.

Is Center expense management still available?

Existing customers still log in and their cards still work. What has gone is the way you would buy it: getcenter.com is now a login, card-activation and support portal, and the pricing, product, solutions, about and demo pages all redirect away or return a 404. New buyers are routed to American Express, whose replacement platform entered early access with select customers in summer 2026.

Are there Center expense management reviews worth reading?

Read them with the date in mind. Almost every Center review page was written while Center was an independent vendor selling its own card and software, so the pricing, roadmap and support commentary all predate American Express. They are still useful on how receipt capture and coding worked day to day. They tell you nothing about what you would be buying in 2026, which is the only question that matters if you are shopping now.

Is Center the same as American Express expense management?

Not yet, and the distinction is worth holding onto. Center is the platform Amex bought and still operates for its existing customers. The Amex expense management software announced in March 2026 is a new product built on that technology, tied to Amex commercial cards and a new Corporate Cash Back Card program. A quote for one is not a quote for the other.

Can I keep my CenterCard if I move to another expense platform?

It depends which platform. Ramp and Brex put their limits, merchant locks and freezes on the cards they issue, so moving to either is a card migration with every recurring vendor charge re-pointed. Expensify and Navan Expense accept outside card feeds, so the card can stay while the software changes. SpendNotify issues nothing and reads what you already hold.

How long does a move off a card-first expense platform take?

Plan a quarter for a single US entity and longer for multi-entity setups. Switching the software on takes days. The time goes into reissuing cards, moving every subscription and recurring vendor charge, rebuilding approval chains, re-mapping the general ledger, and running one full month-end close on both systems before the old one is switched off.

Related reading

If you are shopping this quarter

Whoever ends up owning your expense platform

Acquisitions change roadmaps, rate cards and support. What they never change is that a budget breaks quietly and somebody finds out three weeks later. SpendNotify watches the cards and accounts you already hold, projects where each budget is heading, and messages the owner while it still matters. Read-only, flat monthly pricing, no card to migrate.

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