A Business Credit Card
Every major credit card company provides business credit cards. Amex, Visa, Advanta, MasterCard, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citibank, HSBC Bank, Discover, etc are some of the companies that provide business credit card products.
Business credit cards are primarily used to separate business and personal expenses. Business cards also help organizations cap employee spending unto pre-specified limits. They also help organizations optimize benefits for employees. For example, if a large number of employees shop at a particular retail store, the organization can negotiate a group rate discount on purchases made by their employees, and the benefits can be passed on to all the stakeholders, via credit cards. The credit card company can also generate itemized records of spending by all the employees, which can ease the tracking of employee spending.
Business credit cards also help extend the cash flow of small businesses that have fixed billing cycles and payout timelines. You can pay out cash to suppliers, business associates, vendors etc via credit card instead of using you cash account, and use the credit card billing cycle to pay the money back, after you have been repaid.
Flexible credit limits offered by business credit cards help small businesses ward off significant spikes due to increase in input costs, expenses towards unseen events, etc.
Business credit cards have two types of credit limits:
- Preset by the credit card company, which carry with no annual fees
- No-preset credit limit, which carry a small annual feesWith most business card products, you can avail of important benefits like:
- Points earned on money spent, which you can redeem for other services like airfare, hotel expenses, restaurants, etc
- No annual fee
- No intro APR for an initial pre-specified period
- Lower APR rates, than usual, after the intro APR period expires
- Balance transfer facility
- Discounts on other facilities offered, when the business card is co-branded with another service like a phone service provider, airline, retail store, etc
- Quarterly and annual account summaries
- Lost/Stolen Card ReportingBusiness card products also provide you with auxiliary benefits like:
- A percentage of your business spending given back to you as cash back, gift certificates, and travel rewards
- Emergency cash disbursement & card replacement