Engine, a travel platform focused on SMBs, shared with This Week in Fintech exclusively on Tuesday that it has launched its first corporate card.
The move puts Denver-based Engine in direct competition with other companies in the travel space that also offer a corporate card, including Navan, Concur, and Amex Global Business Travel. It’s an interesting step that marks the evolution of a company that started out as Hotel Engine, booking hotels for consumers, into what CEO and founder Elia Wallen describes as an “all-in-one travel management platform” built specifically for small and mid-sized businesses. Companies use Engine to book flights, hotels, rental cars, events, and meeting spaces, as well as to “manage company travel policy,” Wallen said.
With the launch of the new corporate card, Engine is now effectively also a fintech.
Dubbed “Engine X,” the card comes with no annual fee or contracts, the company touts. It offers automated receipt and expense categorization, as well as the ability to issue unlimited physical and instant virtual cards. On the rewards front, Engine X gives up to 10% back on travel booked through its platform and 1.5% back on all other purchases.
“We've designed Engine X to be a modern, easy-to-use spend management platform that was previously out of reach,” Wallen told This Week in Fintech. “Only about 28% of businesses with annual revenue under $10 million have access to corporate cards today. Engine X is designed to close that gap.”
Businesses also have the ability to set custom spend controls like daily limits, approved spending categories, merchant restrictions and get real-time insights across all card spend, according to Wallen.
Engine opened the waitlist for its new card last November. Since then, it has had over 700 companies join.
To date, Engine has raised a total of $220 million in funding from investors such as Permira, Blackstone Group, Telescope Partners. However, only about $80 million of that was primary funding with the remaining $140 million being secondary capital that did not contribute to the company’s balance sheet. Engine is profitable, according to Wallen, and was valued at $2.1 billion at the time of its last raise in 2024.
Thinking bigger
Wallen started building what is now Engine in 2012 as a project while running Travelers Haven, an on-demand furnished rental company. Over time, customers kept asking the company to help them book hotels too. By 2018, Hotel Engine spun out as its own company.
In 2024, the startup re-branded to Engine because, according to Wallen, when he first named the company, he “wasn’t thinking big enough.”
“As we expanded into flights, rental cars, and more recently meeting spaces and corporate payments, the name no longer reflected what we'd become,” he said.
Indeed, the corporate card and spend management space is a crowded and evolving one. Brex famously made headlines in 2022 when it announced it would stop serving SMBs. And while Ramp claims to still serve SMBs, it also shares stats such as growing its enterprise customer base by 133% year-over-year (as of November 2025), with over 2,200 customers contributing $100,000 or more in annualized revenue. And while Navan emphasizes an "all-in-one" appeal for "customers of all sizes," the internal mix appears to be weighted toward the mid-market and enterprise sectors. In the company’s fiscal 2026 third-quarter earnings reported in December 2025, CEO Ariel Cohen highlighted "continued momentum in the enterprise market.”
For its part, Engine says that 2026 growth is accelerating, at over 70% compared to the same period last year, although it did not provide any hard revenue figures. Over 30,000 businesses use its platform, spanning across the construction, transportation, manufacturing, sports, and emergency services industries. Some examples include WEX, the State of Texas, and the San Antonio Spurs.
Beyond businesses, Engine also serves group travelers for events such as corporate off-sites and weddings. Its platform is free to use – it earns revenue through travel partners, commissions, and interchange.
