Center

Built by the Concur Founder

Steve Singh founded Concur in 1993, sold it to SAP for $8.3 billion in 2014, and then started Center in 2017. He'd seen firsthand how Concur became bloated and frustrating for users. Center is his do-over — a modern expense platform built on the lessons of what went wrong.

The core philosophy is real-time. No more batch processing. No more month-end close headaches. When an employee swipes a CenterCard, the transaction appears in the dashboard within seconds. Smart categorization tags it automatically. The finance team sees spending as it happens, not 30 days later.

CenterCard and Real-Time Tracking

CenterCard is a Mastercard corporate card program. Physical and virtual cards available. Each transaction gets a push notification asking the employee to add a receipt and notes. The compliance rate on receipt attachment is north of 85% according to Center's data, because the prompt comes when the transaction is fresh.

Virtual cards work the same as Divvy's approach — create one per vendor, set limits, freeze instantly. The twist is Center's analytics layer on top. You see real-time spend by department, GL code, project, and vendor. The dashboards update live, not on a refresh cycle.

Audit and Compliance Strengths

This is where Center separates from the pack. The platform flags potential policy violations, duplicate expenses, and unusual spending patterns using ML models. For SOX compliance, the audit trail is immaculate — every action is timestamped and attributed. Companies that have been burned by expense fraud appreciate this depth.

Limitations Worth Knowing

Center doesn't do travel booking. If you need flights and hotels alongside expense management, look at Navan or SAP Concur. The pricing isn't public, but expect enterprise-level rates — this isn't a $5/user tool. The integration list is shorter than Expensify or Brex. And like Divvy, you need to use CenterCards to get the full experience.