New company getting a credit card

I simply use a personal credit card which I dedicate totally to company purchases, this simplifies accounting.

As far as I can see there's no disadvantages at all in doing this (except, I suppose, my personal liability for the purchases). It's no problem at all from the invoicing point of view, all invoices can still be made out to my Ltd. company, it doesn't matter that it's paid with a personal card.

In addition I have of course got a debit (Visa) card associated with the company's business bank account but the company has to have money in the bank to use that.

Thanks again Chris. When you say you have a "debit (Visa) card", is that a Visa Electron card or is it a true Visa card? I think that there's a difference because Dell UK's web site says that they take Mastercard and Visa but they say explicitly that they don't take Electron. Maybe there are 3 types of possible debit cards here: "Visa", "Electron" or "Visa Electron". It's all so confusing!

This isn't a showstopper for me, I'm sure I can always ring up and arrange payment by cheque, but I'd rather do it with a card if possible and it would also help with some other stuff.

If you do have a regular (i.e. non-Electron) Visa debit card then who do you bank with to get this from?

- Julian

I use a Switch Card debiting directly from my Business Account. Most places in my Experience that take Visa will take Switch.

Hope this helps

Andy

I'm with Abbey business banking, works OK, is free, and pays interest on credit balances.

I'm looking at the Visa card now, it certainly doesn't say anything about Electron on it. It just has Abbey, Debit Card and VISA on the front (plus lots of numbers and my name of course). On the back it has Link. It's a revolting lime green colour, that's its main disadvantage! :-)

I did manage to get one for a newly formed company, it is a LloydsTSB Business Chargecard where the payment is automatically taken from the company bank account middle of following month. Admittedly it was damn diffucult, along the lines of my dad is a partner in a firm of chartered accountants and it was a matter of him knowing the the local business team and them authorising it knowing who he was. (Mind you reading yesterdays papers about LloydsTSB maybe that isn't much of a suprise!!!) It does show that all those business lunches with the various banks have some positive effect.

I spent an afternoon phoning banks with the question "what is you policy on issuing credit cards to limited companies" and the majority were minimum of

6 months trading history for a small credit limit reviewed after 2 years accounts at which point I simply said good by and crossed them off the list. Barclaycard Business would consider applications from new companies but were talking a 250 starting point. Most banks demand you bank with them so they can gauge account history which could put a spanner in the works. Abbey were a quite attractive until I discovered no business credit card service.

I think most banks will issue proper visa debit cards to business customers which are what are the equivlant of switch/maestro cards or what used to be called delta cards, they have embossed numbers unlike Electron cards which (IIRC as I haven't ever had one) have the numbers printed on the surface so that they can't be used using manual or mechanical card systems and tend no to be accepted online. I actually find it damn confusing having visa brand on both debit and credit cards, I think mastercard international model is better where they brand debit cards as maestro and credit cards as mastercard.

Not sure if this helps but when I was first contracting I had my business accounts with my local branch of Natwest and I just asked for a company credit card which they gave me. At that point I did have a contract which probably helped show that there would be money coming into the accounts and I had equity in my property which seemed to keep them happy. The card had a limit of 1000GBP which was fine for what I wanted.

Regards Andy