For almost any industry you decide to open up shop in, you’re making a smart move if you choose to establish your business’s legal entity as an LLC. When you become a Limited Liability Company, you’ll get the limited liability protections of a corporation, without all of the complicated paperwork and ongoing requirements.
Now that you’ve chosen the best legal entity for your small business, it’s time to make another decision: Your LLC credit card. When you’re spending on your business, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing so with the best LLC credit card possible.
Even though all LLCs will adhere to the same legal structure, their needs and preferences will certainly vary widely within that legal structure. As a result, there’s really no one best LLC credit card. That’s why we’re breaking all of the best LLC credit card options down by which industry they suit best.
What to Look for in Your LLC Credit Card Options
As you look through your options for your best LLC business credit card, what you’ll notice is that you have a lot of options. That’s a good problem, yes! But too much of a good thing is, well, a bad thing.
In order to make certain that you’re choosing the best LLC credit card—aka the card that benefits your business the most—you’ll want to evaluate each business credit card based on certain factors. We’ve used those same factors to guide us to this list of the best LLC credit cards.
A note: If we don’t cover your industry on our list of the best LLC credit cards, then use these same main features—and how important each is to you in a business credit card—to narrow down your best LLC credit card option on your own.
0% Intro APR Periods
If your LLC credit card offers a 0% intro APR period, then you’ll be able to carry an interest-free balance for a certain amount of months right when you sign on as a cardmember. You think of it, in a way, as a free-money loan.
As long as you’re making your minimum monthly payments on time, every time, then you’ll have up to 15 months (depending on the card you choose) to pay down your balance without gaining any interest on what you owe. You can use that whole period to plan off how to pay down your balance.
Different LLC credit cards will offer different lengths of 0% intro APR, and once the intro APR period is up, your LLC credit card will start charging you interest at a rate that will depend on your creditworthiness and the market Prime Rate. That said, if you’re expecting your LLC to face larger investments in the near future, then a 0% intro APR period might be just what you need in an LLC credit card.
Welcome Offers
Additionally, many LLC credit cards will offer your business a lump sum of rewards if you spend a certain amount within a certain span of time when you first sign on with the card.
And, sometimes, LLC credit cards will come with welcome offers that are worth upwards of $1,000. If you’re not planning on carrying any balances on your LLC credit card in the near future, then a welcome offer could prove to be much more lucrative than a 0% intro APR period.
Top-Earning Spending Categories
You’ll also want to check in on which spending categories any of your LLC credit card options will reward you the most for.
If your business is doing most of its spending on office supplies, then your best LLC credit card option certainly won’t be one that only offer top rewards for travel purchases. If you have erratic spending patterns, then you don’t want to pick a card that’s basically made for business owners who are spending lots on, say, gas. You get it.
Luckily, you’ll more than likely be able to find an LLC credit card that offers top rewards for the purchases that you spend the most on. And if you can’t, you’ll be able to opt for a flat-rate card that rewards all of your spending equally (for you erratic spenders out there).
Rewards Type
Perhaps most importantly, you’ll need to make sure that your LLC credit card will reward your spending in a form that’s actually useful for you.
While some business owners want to access valuable rewards points that will have more value when they redeem them as travel, other business owners will prefer cash back rewards that they can redeem as straightforward statement credits.
Fees
Finally, you’ll need to keep an eye on the fees that an potential LLC credit card comes with.
Most importantly, you’ll need to see if your LLC credit card comes with an annual fee. Some of the most beneficial LLC credit cards will. As a result, you’ll need to make sure that the rewards you earn from any given LLC credit card option will make up for the amount you’ll have to pay each year for the card.
Even if you choose a no annual fee business credit card You’ll also need to keep an eye out for balance transfer fees and foreign transaction fees, among other miscellaneous fees. With balance transfer fees, an LLC credit card issuer will charge you a percentage of any pre-existing debt you move to your new card. And if you’re doing a lot of spending abroad, you’ll want to avoid LLC credit cards with foreign transaction fees, which will cost you up to 3% of every dollar you spend overseas.
→TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read): If you want to narrow down your best LLC credit card options on your own, the main criteria you should use are 0% intro APR periods, welcome offers, top earning spending categories, rewards type, and fees.
Best LLC Credit Card for Online Retail and Ecommerce: Chase Ink Preferred
If you’re running an online retail LLC, then you should seriously consider putting your spending on the Chase Ink Preferred for two main reasons—its welcome bonus and its top spending categories.
You’ll earn 80,000 points if you spend $5,000 within your first three months after opening your Ink Preferred account. These points, when you redeem them for travel through Chase Ultimate Rewards, will be worth $1,000 of free travel.
Plus, all that shipping and traveling you’re doing for your online retail LLC certainly won’t do unrewarded—you’ll get 3x points for the first $150,000 you spend annual on travel, shipping, search engine and social media advertising, and communication services purchases you make on this LLC credit card.
Be sure to note that this LLC credit card will come with an annual fee of $95, which is certainly not ideal. But, if you’re confident that you’ll spend enough to access the welcome offer, then you’ll more than recoup this value.
→TL;DR: The Ink Preferred is the top LLC credit card for online retail businesses because it rewards shipping and travel purchases with 3x points and offers a 80,000 welcome offer, worth $1,000 of travel.
Best LLC Credit Card for Freelance Services: American Express Plum Card
Being a freelancer is tough.
Even if you’re able to establish your freelance services as an LLC, you’ll still have to deal with customers who drag out overdue payments and miss their invoice due dates. As a result, you’re going to want to look for an LLC credit card that will provide you with as much payment flexibility as possible.
So, ironically enough, the best LLC credit card that will give you this payment flexibility isn’t even an LLC credit card at all—it’s a charge card. Even though most charge cards are notoriously stringent on paying your balance in full, on time, the American Express Plum charge card offers incomparable payment flexibility with a 60-day grace period for each of your monthly payments.
Of course, because the Plum Card is a charge card, you’ll have to make sure that you can pay off your balance in full by the end of the grace period. Otherwise, you’ll get hit with steep late fees.
Alternatively, the Plum Card will also reward you if you’re able to pull off early payments. If you’re able to pay off your balance in full within 10 days of your statement closing date, then you’ll earn an unlimited 1.5% cash back on all that you pay down.
The Plum Card will come with an arguably steep annual fee of $250, but AMEX will waive that fee for your first year with this LLC card. And when you measure that annual fee against the potential savings—and earnings—you could access through the Plum Card, it seems like small change.
→TL;DR: The Plum Card is ideal for freelancers, because it offers a 60-day grace period for each statement bill and 1.5% cash back for any statement bill you can pay early.
Best LLC Credit Card for New Startups Everywhere: American Express SimplyCash Plus
If you’re just starting up your LLC—no matter which industry you’re breaking into—then the very best LLC credit card for your situation is the American Express SimplyCash Plus.
This LLC credit card offers one of the two longest 0% intro APR periods on the market. You’ll be able to access 15 whole months of 0% APR on purchases if you opt for the SimplyCash Plus. After those 15 months, your APR will set in at a rate that will depend on your creditworthiness and the market Prime Rate, so check in with the issuer’s terms and conditions to get the latest APR information.
So, as you’re covering costly startup expenses—no matter what they might be—you’ll be able to access 15 months of interest-free financing with this LLC credit card. But even after those 15 months are up, you’ll be able to access cash back for the spending you do with the SimplyCash Plus. You’ll earn:
- 5% cash back for the first $50,000 you spend annually on:
- US wireless phone services
- US office supply store purchases
- 3% cash back on the first $50,000 you spend annually on your choice of one of the following categories:
- Airfare you purchase directly from airlines
- Hotel stays you book directly with hotels
- US gas stations
- Car rentals
- US restaurants
- US advertising
- US shipping
- Computer hardware, software, and cloud computing purchases made in the US and directly with select providers
- 1% on everything else
Unless you don’t plan on carrying a balance on your LLC credit card, then the SimplyCash Plus will be your best bet for your startup LLC.
→TL;DR: The SimplyCash Plus is an LLC credit card that offers 15 months of 0% intro APR and some of the most lucrative yet flexible cash back rewards of any LLC credit card out there.
Best LLC Credit Card for Restaurants and Cafés: Capital One Spark Cash
Finally, if you’re looking for an LLC credit card for your restaurant and café, then your best bet will be the Capital One Spark Cash.
Because very few LLC credit cards will allow you to access top rewards for groceries or dry goods—most will reward you for spending more characteristic of office-based LLCs—you’re best off searching for LLC credit cards that offer flat-rate rewards.
And the Spark Cash is the best of them.
This LLC credit card will reward you 2% cash back for every single dollar you spend with it—no matter what you’re spending on, with no limit to how much you can earn.
So, if you’re doing most of your spending on expenses that aren’t your typical office expenses—as most restaurants and cafés are—you’ll be earning as much as possible with the Spark Cash.
Be sure to note that the Spark Cash will come with a $95 annual fee that will set in for your second year with the card. But the card’s welcome offer of $500 cash back for spending $4,500 within your first three months will more than offset that eventual cost.
→TL;DR: The Spark Cash is the best LLC credit card for restaurants and cafés, because it provides 2% flat-rate cash back for these business’s atypical expenses.
Choosing the Right LLC Credit Card for Your Business
Now that you’ve made it through this guide to finding the best LLC credit card for your business, you’re walking away with a wealth of information. Not only do you know which LLC credit cards are the best for your industry—you also know how to confirm it all for yourself.
With the process of finding the best LLC credit cards laid out in front of you, along with all of the details on the best LLC credit cards, you’re well on your way to finding your business’s perfect way to spend.
The post The Best LLC Credit Card, According to Your Industry appeared first on Fundera Ledger.
from Fundera Ledger https://www.fundera.com/blog/llc-credit-card
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