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This article explores the different types of cash back business credit cards available for the small business owner. Many personal cash rebate credit cards offer just a 1% for every dollar of purchase you make on the card, and a couple stand out by allowing cardholders to earn 5% cash rebates on supermarket, gasoline and drugstore purchases. In contrast, most cash back business credit cards issued by the major card issuers offer more than 1% rebates when you purchase "business items", which can range from 3% to 5%. But unlike personal cards, the definition of "business expenses" vary among cards. We are now going to explore the various options available to the small business owner. At the same time, we want to emphasis that all of these are very good cash rebate cards. Your decision will really depend on your type of business expenses you have and whether which card (or combination) will allow you to earn the most rebates.
Editor's Choice: Blue Cash for Business
The Blue Cash® for Business Credit Card from American Express has a unique and very good cash rebate formula. For the first $15,000 in annual spending, you can earn 5% cash rebates when you make purchases with OPENSAVINGS merchant partners. There are office supply partners, travel and dining partners and business building tools partners.
Office supply partners include AT&T, Fedex, American Express Gift Cards. Travel and Dining partners include Marriott Courtyard, Marriott Fairfield Inn, Hertz, Hyatt, Ruby Tuesday. You save 5% when you make purchases at any of these merchants except, American Gift Cards, Hyatt and Ruby Tuesday, where you save 3%. Building tools partners include Constant Contact (save 15%), Expensable (save 25%), Logoworks (save 15%), BizFiling (save 20%) and Ceridian (save 20%).
However, the most interesting feature is that for the first $15,000 in annual spending, you can earn an unheard of 2.5% cash rebates on "other purchases". No other cash rebate card comes close to this.
Once your annual spending exceeds $15,000, you will earn 2% on OPENSAVINGS products and 1% rebates on "other purchases". You can earn unlimited rebates with this card.
Other Business Credit Cards with Cash Back
The Discover Small Business Card allows you to earn 5% rebates on office supplies. These may include purchases at places like Office Depot for example. You earn 2% rebates on gasoline purchases. But the most interesting feature of this card is that you can exchange your cash rebates for a higher value in gift certificates (up to double the value) on certain brands and merchant partners.
The other interesting feature about this card is that Discover offers special merchant discounts periodically. For example, at the moment, you can save 5% to 20% of Levono PCs or related products, 10% on Enterprise Rent-a-car.
The Advanta Platinum with Rewards definition of purchase that will earn you 5% rebates is a little more generous. 5% rebates are earned on qualifying purchases of "gasoline and diesel fuel", "computers, computer supplies, electronics and office supplies" and "utilities and telecommunications" items. You earn 1% rebates on other purchases. This card has the honor of having the longest period for a 0% apr offer (balance transfer), 15 months. The apr is fixed at 7.99%, which is probably the lowest apr of any small business credit card at the moment. The other area where the Advanta Card with Rewards is better than the Blue Cash and Discover card is that you earn earn 5% rebates on gasoline and diesel purchases (Blue Cash does not pay higher rebates on gasoline while the Discover card pays only 2%).
Closing Comments
These are all very good cash back business credit cards. The reason we recommend the Blue Cash for highly is because you can earn 2.5% cash rebates on "other purchases", which is unheard of. For most small business, combining cash back business credit cards is the way to maximize your cash rebates. They key is to look at the items that these card pay 5% rebates for, figuring out if these are important expenses in your business. If they are, then choose that card and combine it with the Blue Cash. That is the way I would do it.
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