Certify/Chrome River Acquires Commercial Card Startup Emburse

Certify/Chrome River, the resulting entity of the previous merger between Certify and Chrome River, is expanding its spend management services portfolio with another takeover.

A press release Monday (July 29) said Certify/ChromeRiver have reached a deal to acquire Emburse, a startup that provides virtual and physical commercial cards to manage employee spend as well as vendor payments.

Emburse operates in the corporate travel and expense management space with its commercial card solutions, which can enable employees to access cards via text and digital wallet, or use physical cards. The company connects business managers to heightened visibility into employee spend and greater control over corporate expenses.

Through the merger, Emburse will join Certify/Chrome River’s existing portfolio of spend management solutions from Abacus, Nexonia, Tallie and Captio. Emburse will first be integrated into the Abacus expense management platform, the companies said.

“Joining such a prestigious portfolio of travel, expense and invoice management brands will greatly accelerate our ability to expand Emburse’s reach,” said Emburse CEO Peter Lai in the release. “We share a common goal in helping organizations control employee spending and reduce expense fraud, all while providing a user-friendly and flexible solution to both frequent and infrequent card users.”

Abacus Co-founder and General Manager Omar Qari said, “Adding Emburse to Abacus will enable the next major step in real-time expense reporting innovation by providing policy insight in advance of the purchase. This exciting new capability will continue to reduce customer liability, while improving the overall employee and interview candidate experience.”

Certify and Chrome River announced their merger in March in a deal worth $1 billion. The merger placed a majority stake of the combined entity in K1 Investment Management and enabled the firms to continue operating independently.

In addition to market consolidation, the corporate expense management landscape continues to see greater competition. Earlier this year, Divvy’s expense management technology secured $200 million from investors, while earlier this month, a new industry player, Sweep, announced the launch of its operations.