Business Credit Card Rewards: Understand The Types Available To You

Types of Business Credit Card Rewards

A business credit card can help you build points toward travel expenses such as free airline tickets or hotel rooms. You don’t have to wait until you’ve earned enough points for a full ticket to start cashing in your rewards – some airline cards let you use some of your points to upgrade seats from coach to first class, check bags for free or waive a ticket change fee.

If you regularly buy office supplies or equipment, look for business credit card rewards that offer discounts on those expenses. Some business credit cards offer cash back on purchases. In addition, you might be able to extend warranties on items you purchase, add buyer protection on items that might break or add price protection.Price protection guarantees you the lowest advertised price on an item for a specific period, even after you’ve purchased something. If you buy a printer for $300 and see it advertised for $250 the next day, your credit card company will reduce your purchase charge.

Chase Bank’s Ink card offers a tiered reward program, offering different amounts of points for purchases on office supplies, equipment, Internet and cable fees, gas and dining and miscellaneous spending. For example, you can earn a 5 percent cash-back bonus on qualifying purchases, up to a total of $25,000 of your spending amount.

Using Employee Cards

Depending on the size of your business and your credit history, you can obtain credit cards for your employees, which they can use while traveling or making business-related purchases. For example, if you have several departments that need to make purchases, you can assign a card to each department or function (marketing, human resources, IT, production).

If you have sales people, giving them credit cards allows them to book their flights and rooms, take a taxi to the hotel, pay for meals, make phone calls and charge any other expenses they have while travelling on your behalf. Not only does this earn you points on all of your staff spending, it can eliminate the need for an expense report. It also means your employees don’t have to spend their own cash or use their own credit while traveling on behalf of the company, submit an expense reimbursement request and wait for to collect their money. This can be a benefit of business credit card rewards.

The problem with issuing employee credit cards includes the potential for employee fraud. You will need to take specific steps to set up protocols regarding how and when employees can use their cards and monitor their usage.