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Ask HN: What credit card does your US startup use?

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Re: Ask HN: What credit card does your US startup use?

#11
post #9

We have a Chase Ink card, it was fairly easy to get and we have a limit over $10,000 so we can use it for all of our expenses.

Ditto on this one. https://creditcards.chase.com/a1/olainkcash/th

We have the no annual fee version (Business Cash rather than Business Preferred).

Re: Ask HN: What credit card does your US startup use?

#13
Possibly the best card for startup business expenses is the Chase Ink. It gives 5x points on office supplies and telco, and quite a few ISPs count as utilities. Getting 5x points on your server bills is very nice.

Points can be transferred to airline partners for super cheap international first and business class tickets (10¢ per point of value, often), or can be redeem at 1.5¢ per point for any cash flights or hotel rooms on their travel portal. Worst case, 1¢ per point as cashback.

Amex also has quite a few great business card. The Business Rewards Gold, The Business Platinum, and the Business Starwood SPG cards are the best.

Re: Ask HN: What credit card does your US startup use?

#14

If you use a VISA check card from your bank you can easily monitor all expenses through your company bank account. I found this helpful for my startup, but as you get bigger and spend more money you'll probably want to look at cards that give you extras (cash back, etc...).

The big problem with that is that debit cards have much slower fraud protections than credit cards (depending on issuer, of course).

If fraud hits your debit card, your cash account is empty and things like rent may be getting returned while you deal with it. With a credit card, that's the credit card company's money so they move faster.

Re: Ask HN: What credit card does your US startup use?

#15

Not card advice but operational advice: From being at startups where people tend to move fast and often move on, tell your staff that they can use the services they need BUT you will only reimburse them for 3 months. After that, it must be on the corp card. I've seen too many times where AWS, Mailchimp, etc, etc are on someone's personal card and once they leave, everything blows up after a couple months. It's even w…

I would say save the hassles and just stick to the corps credit card. I experienced the AWS under a personal credit card issue, but AWS was quick to resolve the issue with us anyway.

Though it is needless to say, also make sure you have a vendor email address to manage vendors. We have had vendor account signed up using work email but after the person left the company, we lose the account control and have to ping account manager. Sometimes, that process can take days to complete.

Re: Ask HN: What credit card does your US startup use?

#17
post #6

My advice would be to make sure you have more than 1 card. There will be a fraudulent purchase at some point leading to a card re-issue. You don't want to be dead in the water for a few days while that happens!

Very true, learned-from-experience type advice. Some banks my not really get the need and ask a bunch of questions, but in my experience they were more excited for the opportunity to charge more credit card fees :)

Re: Ask HN: What credit card does your US startup use?

#19
Here are some features you might want for any business:

1. Reporting on who spent how much on what?

2. Access control and roll over in case someone leaves, joins, quits angrily and so on

3. Backup and contingency plans in case your bank decides to revoke their relationship.

4. Points back.

I think Amex has the most finely grained reporting and control and this, alone, is worth more than the others.

Re: Ask HN: What credit card does your US startup use?

#20
post #18

If you're spending much on advertising I would give Amex Platinum a look. They offer 3x points on one category per year and advertising is one of the options. The points add up fast and come in handy for flights.

You forgot to mention that $550 annual fee.
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