I have now come to the view that we are better off getting business credit cards than regular consumer credit cards. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, by simply comparing the features of the regular consumer cards and business credit cards. Here are a few examples of where business credit cards are better.

1. 0% APR Credit Cards - Most consumer credit cards have 0% balance transfer teaser rates for 12 months. The longest introductory period today for a 0% APR credit card is actually a business credit card from Advanta. The Advanta Platinum BusinessCard with Rewards not only has 0% APR for 15 months, but probably has the lowest APR today at 7.99%.

American Express Business Credit Cards - American Express Business Credit Cards have the added advantage of giving cardholders discount when they make purchases with their OPENSAVINGs partners like Fedex, Delta Airlines and Courtyard by Marriott. Hence, the Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express is a better card than the regular Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express .

Here’s another example : The Business Gold Rewards Card from OPEN^SM the small business team has the same annual fee and features as the regular American Express® Preferred Rewards Gold Card. But you can earn 100,000 bonus points with the business card versus 10,000 bonus points for the consumer card. Also, the business gold card allows you to get discounts with OPENSAVINGs partners which you do not get with the regular gold card.

Here’s another example : Aside from earning regular air miles, the JetBlue Business Credit Card from American Express also gives you a 5% discount when you purchase JetBlue tickets. This discount is not available with the regular JetBlue Credit Card!

The same things applies to the Gold Delta SkyMiles® Business Credit Card from OPEN^SM the small business team. The business card allows you to get a 5% discount when you buy Delta Airline tickets whereas the regular consumer card only allows you to earn air miles. In addition, you’ll get more bonus miles. The annual fee is also the same for both business and consumer cards.

Citibank Business Versus Consumer Cards

Citibank’s business credit cards are also better than many of their regular consumer cards. Here is an examples.

The CitiBusiness® PremierPass^SM Card, like the regular Citi PremierPass Elite Card allows cardholders to earn one mile for every dollar spent on the card and also one mile for every mile flown. But in addition to that, the business version allows cardholders to earn 3 points for every dollar spent on certain business expenses.

Conclusion - I think these examples show that in many cases, getting the business credit card rather than the consumer version is a much better deal. In fact, you do not need a business of actually get a business card. Just use your name as the business and your social security as the Tax ID and you will be treated as a sole proprietor.

There have been lots of post lately on business credit cards lately. I have also been doing some research into this area of small business credit cards and have found out a few interesting things.

One of the things I set to find out was whether you had to personally guarantee your “business credit card”, whether having one helped you build your credit history. So I started making my round of calls to all the major credit card issuers. Here is what I found out.

1. Small Business Credit Cards Require Personal Guarantee

Yes, even though it is a “small business credit card”, you are personally liable if your business (or rather business credit card) misses any payment. When you apply for a business credit card, your personal credit score will be pulled by the issuer and your approval based on that.

But I thought that that business credit cards do not require personal guarantees? Well, the type of business credit cards you are probably refering to are corporate credit cards. Most credit card issuers have corporate credit cards, but these are issued by the corporate department rather than the credit card department. To qualify for a corporate credit card, your business needs to have a certain amount of revenue, a certain number of employees and even a certain length of existence. If you business meets these criteria set out by the banks, then these cards will not require personal guarantees.

Not all “Small Business Credit Cards” will build your business credit history

Many business experts will tell you that you need to build your business credit as soon as possible to enable you to get lines of credit at good rates in the future. Aside from incorporating your business properly and registering with business credit bureaus like Dun & Bradstreet, you need to establish a line of credit from a few suppliers, open a business bank account and get a business credit card.

But I found out that a couple of regular business credit cards do not actually report to business credit bureaus! So here is the results of my investigation on this matter.

Advanta Business Cards - Does not report to any business credit bureaus although they reserve the right to!

Capital One - Reports to Equifax Small Business

Discover Business Card - Reports to both Business credit bureaus (Dun & Bradstreet and Equifax) and personal credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion).

Citi - Reports to Dun & Bradstreet. Does not report to personal credit bureaus unless you are late on payment by more than 65 days.

Chase - Reports to Dun & Bradstreet. Does not report to personal credit bureaus.

Bank of America - Reports to Dun & Bradstreet.

American Express - Does not report to any business credit bureaus but reports to personal credit bureaus as a business card.

As you can see, both American Express and Advanta Business Cards do not report to business credit bureaus. Hence, if building a business credit history is important to you (as it should be), then you should actually avoid both these issuers. But if you do not care about building a business credit history, then which card you get shouldn’t really matter from that perspective.

Anyone Can Apply For a Business Credit Card

What most people do not know is that anyone can apply for a business credit card. You actually do not need a business to do so. Just apply as a “sole proprietor”. If fact, many of us have left business credit cards out when we compare which cards to get. In fact, you may be missing on some very good cards as a result of not looking at “small business credit cards”. I shall be exploring this soon in upcoming post.