As of September 2022, only one major credit card issuer offers a business credit card without a personal guarantee. Ever risk averse, few providers want to issue a business credit card and then get stuck with the debt if the business fails.
However, you can still find no-personal-guarantee business credit cards with smaller or independent banks. Here’s a roundup of your options and how to choose the business credit cards without a personal guarantee.
| Card | Description | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Brex Card | An excellent charge card with high credit limit and generous rewards program. It comes with a $0 annual fee for the first five cards and it has a signup bonus of worth of services from partners like Amazon, Salesforce, Zendesk and more. | |
| Charity Charge Nonprofit Business Mastercard® | A no-annual-fee business rewards card that automatically deposits your earned cash back to the charity of your choice. | |
| Stripe Corporate Card | A no-annual-fee credit card for fast-growing online businesses. Earn cash back and get valuable rewards from partners, including Amazon, Shopify, Google Ads and more. | |
| Shell Small Business Card | A no-annual-fee card for businesses with vehicle fleets. This card comes with discounts per gallon bought at Shell gas stations. |
A personal guarantee is a legal promise made by a business owner or an organization to accept the responsibility to repay the credit issued to their business in case it fails to pay its debt.
For a small corporation or a limited liability company that doesn’t have a credit history, the manager or stockholders typically personally guarantee they’ll pay the debt in case the company goes bankrupt.
Yes, but it’s hard to meet the requirements for most such cards if you run a small business. The only exception here is the Brex card where the main requirement is to have at least a $100,000 in your bank account.
When you apply for a business credit card, your card provider will require a personal guarantee. This means that if your business fails, you will personally have to pay for your business credit card debt.
A card without a personal guarantee won’t hold you personally liable for business credit card debt.
Business credit cards can affect your personal credit when the card issuer does a hard pull on your credit, when it reports your card activity to credit bureaus and if you default on your payments.
Business credit cards with no personal guarantee often don’t report to personal credit, and since you’re not personally liable for the debt — they won’t report to personal credit even if you default on your payments. The only way it can affect your personal credit is if a card issuer does a hard pull when you apply for the card.
Follow these tips to limit the impact your business credit card has on your personal credit score:
If such an unfortunate event occurs, the card issuer will expect you to cover the debt with your personal assets. If you still can’t pay off the debt, the card issuer can take you to court and pursue your personal assets until the debt is cleared off.
If you don’t want to get a business credit card with a personal guarantee, your choices are narrowed to corporate gas cards, prepaid business cards and cards that don’t report to the personal credit bureaus.
It’s difficult to find the perfect business credit card without a personal guarantee. In many cases, you’ll have to meet certain criteria and you’ll likely be limited to using the card on the issuer’s products or services.
There are a couple of workarounds, however. You can get prepaid business cards that have zero impact on your personal credit, or you can get business cards from a bank that doesn’t report your activity to the personal credit bureaus.
Compare business cards to find one that’s right for you.
Here are our top picks for 2021.