Business Credit Card Strategy Advice

[bubbafrombama]

I found this quite interesting, too. Seems silly they have different standards for their cards, but I chalk that up to many banks still having antiquated IT systems. Note, I'm referring to Capital One.

[Jessie]

Your personal credit standing should qualify you for the best small business credit cards. I like Cap 1 Spark Cash Plus myself.  

[RealEstateGuy89]

I would try to get two or three cards now and then try to get two or three more business cards later in the year.  It would be good to get credit established now and have sufficient credit cards/lines already built up as you will probably want to expand your business later on once it gets going.  It's much easier to do that if you already have the credit handy.

Amex would definitely be a good place to start. After you get your first credit card, usually there's no more hard pulls to get any additional AMEX cards, as they are a soft pull after that.  I currently have the Amex Amazon 5% card, the Business Plus and the Business Cash at Amex.  After you have a little bit of business credit established, you can probably get a decent credit limit at Sam's Club and usually you do not have to personally guarantee their cards either.  You can read about that by searching for Sam's Club in this forum.  My first Sam's Club card credit limit started out at $12k and I usually asked for CLI's at around the 6 month mark. 

Another one that has been REALLY good to me has been FNBO Bank.  I have several of their credit cards, including the Business Evergreen card, which allows you to get a pre-approval using a soft credit pull at their website before you apply.  When I first opened the Evergreen card back in MAY 2021, I was given a $15k credit limit to start, which was pretty generous back then. They will tell you the amount you are preapproved for when you go through that process.

There are many more good lines of credit/credit cards I could list but I listed some of my favorites, so I'll let you research the forum to find out what works well for you and your business. But if you have any questions at all, just post them and I or the fine folks here will reply.  You will be glad you started doing all this now so that when it is time to grow your business, you will have the funding at the ready to do it.  Just remember, It is always the easiest to borrow money when you don't need it! 🤣  Best of luck to you.  

[AndrewF]

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@Debt-is-a-Scam wrote:

So one big advantage to having business credit cards is to separate your business expenses from personal expenses and to hide the utilization from your personal credit reports. The very unfortunate flaw with capital one's line up of credit cards is that only the Spark 2% cash plus and the Venture X Business credit cards do not report to your personal credit profiles. Meaning that all of their other business credit cards will indeed report to your personal credit profiles which essentially does defeat the primary purpose of having a business credit card in my opinion.

Now , I believe many issuers require you to have your business open for at least one year before becoming eligible for a business credit card. However, you may be able to apply for one as a sole proprietor as if you are working for yourself as an independent contractor doing various sorts of gig work without having your business registered with the state government. This could be anything from arbitrage, to uber driving, or even building computers and selling them to people. Though these sorts of things may depend on the issuers so you may want to shop around and ask about this before you apply.

When it comes to the actual cards themselves as far as which ones to apply for, may we know what your primary spending categories will be? Perhaps you purchase a bunch of equipment and tools from Amazon and you could benefit from the Amazon business credit card.  You may also want to first check with your bank or credit union that you have checking or savings accounts with.

Another strategy you may consider trying is applying for a secured business loan to help jump start your business and build credit.

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American Express is pretty easy to get as a sole prop if you have a good history with them as a personal card holder.

Your business doesn't need to have been open that long or have even made much money yet, and often the only thing they want to confirm is your address, SSN, and name.

[cchunter]

Can we still get a Business credit card with zero LLC income ?

[AndrewF]

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@cchunter wrote:

Can we still get a Business credit card with LLC income zero?

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I think that's less likely to be approved than if you're guaranteeing it with personal credit.

[RealEstateGuy89]

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@cchunter wrote:

Can we still get a Business credit card with zero LLC income ?

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I wouldn't be comfortable enough to saythat there is a business credit card out there that you can get approved with zero business LLC income and no personal guarantee...

I would think that your chances of approval would increase much more if you had income to report on the credit application. It's kinda like if you can't get your LLC to make any money yet, the creditor probably isn't going be very confident that you will be able to do it after you get the credit card either.

I do know of some credit cards that are obtainable without personal guarantee, but with the business managing member signing the application with reportable income.

Let us know where you are successful in getting credit cards and lines of credit for your business without giving a personal guarantee. 

[Techwiz45]

I recently applied for the Blue Business Cash and was approved for that card with $2000 SL. Also wow I had no idea this thread continued to have responses. I'll probably add the new Business Prime card from US Bank to the stack later since I spend a good bit on Amazon for the business, but for now I'm slowing my card applications velocity until my 2025 tax return is processed.