Business Credit Cards - Advantageous in Many Situations, Large and Small

Summary: Why selecting the best business credit card can be an elusive and moving target.

For as many different types of businesses there are in the world, there are almost as many types of business credit cards. Business cards come in various forms, and choosing the right one may in fact be a difficult business decision. So pretend that you're my parents for a moment, and you own a pastry and cake shop, as they do. One day an obsessive-compulsive mother walks in, ordering a cake for her daughter's wedding. She wants edible candy flowers on it, edible silver bells, a photo screened on to the icing, and various other costly things that need to be exactly as she ordered, else she will have a breakdown and become catatonic for eight hours. It's a very expensive cake to make, costing about $500 to make (fortunately you will be charging the fanatical mother about four times that), but it's been a slow month. You don't have $500 ready at your disposal. Right at that moment the great American slogan 'Buy now! Pay later!' comes ringing into your head and you realize that the cake is possible to make before ol' OC mom pays you, because you can use your small business credit card. Or maybe you run a business that involves flying around rich 30-something investment bankers that still gel their receding hairlines and dress like they're seventeen. A small business card that has a rewards program, specifically one targeted for frequent flyer miles, might help you cut back on the cost of sending one of the pompous little buggers from Boston to Los Angeles so he can decide not to invest in one of your projects. It might even pay for your transport to a respite in Oahu where your cell phone tab will be grossly inflated soliciting more bankers. You might be the head of a company that used to be small, and suddenly is not so small. You find yourself employing over 100 people, and you want a business card to make transactions less nail-biting. Small business cards don't really do much for you, but you haven't seen any ads on TV or online for anything that could help you. Rest assured that creditors make custom business credit cards for larger companies, but as they are rare, you don't hear too much about them. These are just three possible examples of the dozens of business cards out there targeted to a specific business situation. Just as credit decision-makers want to select the card best suited to address their needs, card issuers are constantly creating new offers to smaller and smaller niche markets making the selection process increasingly more difficult. Many of the cards for small businesses have a 0% introductory APR, for anywhere from six to fifteen months, which is quite a reasonable and affordable start. As far as large business cards go, their APRs are tough to nail into a cut and dry generality, as almost all of them are custom made. The good news is if you're fretting about which large business credit card to get, odds are you don't need to fret about a lot of other things involving money that the rest of us do.