Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

51–60 of 111 posts

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

#51
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!

Thats why i like Amex, their fraud detections systems quite advanced. Even when my card had fraud on it and they issued a new card #. All vendors still worked with the old card number.

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

#52

Get a 2% cash back card. I think capital one has them. If you're running an ecommerce business for example with low margins but high spend (on google adwords or whatever), getting that 2% cash back really can be a huge boost to your profitability.

We fall into a business category you describe and have a 1.5% cash back card...with a current balance of just over $1.3m, which we will pay off in full later this month, and then do it all over again :)

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

#53

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…

On that note: create an alias accountspayable@ or something equivalent and use that for all invoicing. Absolutely disallow signing up for services with individual user accounts.

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

#54
post #51
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!

Thats why i like Amex, their fraud detections systems quite advanced. Even when my card had fraud on it and they issued a new card #. All vendors still worked with the old card number.

That was the case with my discover too

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

#55

Get a 2% cash back card. I think capital one has them. If you're running an ecommerce business for example with low margins but high spend (on google adwords or whatever), getting that 2% cash back really can be a huge boost to your profitability.

this 2%. nerdwallet for help. I have yet to see anyone beat the 2% back other than bonus signons - but those are 1 time and on a 2-3 year horizon go with 2%. Fidelity has a 2% one as well that deposits cash into a fidelity investment account vs CapOne where you have to apply points to other transactions to utilize the full 2% back (and CapOne redemption only applies to certain Merchant Category Codes... FYI Timeshare…

If you're considering personal cards, USAA has 2.5% cash back on everything if you have a bank account + $1000/month direct deposit with them. http://usaa.com/limitless (limited to certain states)

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

#56
post #51
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!

Thats why i like Amex, their fraud detections systems quite advanced. Even when my card had fraud on it and they issued a new card #. All vendors still worked with the old card number.

Not only that. If you have fraud alert, they'll ship you a new card overnight. From a customer perspective Amex is amazing.

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

#58
If you have high expenses and want to leverage a good rebate, I would recommend getting the Alliant Cashback Visa Signature Credit Card.

It offers a 3% cash back off all purchases during your first year and the annual fee ($59) is waived during the first year. 2.5% cash back after the first year.

Source: http://www.doctorofcredit.com/alliant-cashback-visa-signatur...

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

#60
I've been running my affiliate business for a long time on several cards, but have so far found amex gold / platinum to be the best if you have any measure of marketing expenses.

The gold business card gives 3X points on Facebook/google ads, while the business platinum gives 1.5x points on purchases over $5k (useful for equipment purchases). You also get 50% points back on preferred airline travel bought with points directly through amex.com

I do realize that not everyone has credit sufficient to get these two, but if accessible they are great.

Post reply on HN