Ranking the Business Credit Card Options (updated October 23, 2016)
I have been ranking the overall credit card portfolios of each financial institutions. However, I think it may be worthwhile to rank business credit card portfolios only. As I have been collecting my own batch of business credit cards, this will be helpful for me too.
In case you do not already know, when I am building my own credit card portfolio, I constantly refer back to my own research to help me. This site was created as a way of documenting my research that I personally do to help me keep track.
Unlike the other ranking system, there are only a handful of companies that offer business credit cards, so there only be 1 grouping. So let’s get the ball rolling.
1) American Express
American Express offers some of the best business credit cards.
- American Express Business Gold Rewards Card
- American Express Business Platinum Card
- American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card
You can also receive some exclusive business credit card bonus offers not offered to the public and personalised service for your business card if you complete our referral form.
I would also strongly consider the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card, while it is still available, because we have no idea what is going on with the Marriott merger. Though I did get a chance to interview the VPs of SPG and Marriott, so you may find some insights there.
Some people may also like the Air Miles co-branded credit cards, but seeing as Air Miles is fairly unpopular nowadays, I left them off the list for the time being. Let’s see how things play out before possibly adding them back. Either way, American Express are by far in first place. There is not even a close second at the moment.
2) CIBC
Oddly enough, CIBC has a stronger business portfolio than its personal one. The main reason is because they generally offer higher sign up bonuses, and more consistent about waiving their first year fees. Granted the annual fees on the business version is higher than personal version.
For now, I am more than happy to put CIBC as second place!
3) TD Canada Trust (TD)
TD has some nice higher than normal sign up bonus promotions, but necessarily first year fees waived. Both CIBC and TD offer nice credit card options for travel insurance, so it is perfect for business travellers.
4) Royal Bank (RBC)
Royal Bank actually has two decent options. A cash back version and an Avion card, which doesn’t have promotions to waive its unless fee. You would either have to have a premium chequing account or push them to help you waive it, which they may not even necessarily do. For this reason, they are in fourth place.
4) Bank of Montreal (BMO)
I know I said that I would not include Air Miles co-branded credit cards. I could get away with that for American Express, as they have some other way more competitive cards. So that should put in perspective how far of a gap American Express has from the rest if you want to include the Air Miles credit cards in their top picks.
BMO has some decent options, and they would probably rank higher than Royal Bank if it weren’t for the Air Miles debacle. But if I had to choose, the Avion program is much more valuable than Air Miles or cash back.
5) Scotiabank
Scotiabank has a fair cash back based credit card, but the portfolio is still fairly week at the moment compared to the companies list above.
6) Desjardins
Unless you have your business account with Desjardins, to get some extra attention, I would not bother with their current credit card portfolio. You have better choices listed above.
7) National Bank
At this point, I am just listing companies because they offer credit card options for businesses, but you are better off getting credit cards from the other companies.
I haven’t included HSBC or Laurentian Bank on this list for the time being. Their portfolios are too weak. Unless personal credit cards where most companies would have at least 1 competitive credit card to talk about.
Generally with business credit cards, you will notice that they have higher than personal credit card annual fees. You may see an annual on a credit card that doesn’t have any fees on the personal version. Or you may also find that you get less benefits with business credit cards than with personal.
So what I recommend is that you focus your energy on some of the top business credit card options, regardless of who you are banking with.