The rest of the form can look built for corporations, with fields for business type, annual revenue, and years in business. Each field has an honest answer for a sole proprietor, and the Small Business Administration says you’re already one if you do business without registering as another kind of company.
Fill it in as the business you actually run, since issuers can reject an application with inaccurate details.
- Choose sole proprietorship as the business type.
- Use your home address if that’s where you work.
- Report annual revenue, which is everything the business brings in before expenses. A new business can enter $0.
- Give the years you’ve been in business, and list one employee if it’s just you.
A freelance designer who bills $30,000 a year applies as a sole proprietor with her Social Security number and reports $30,000 in revenue, not the $22,000 she keeps after paying for software and equipment.
Expect the issuer to check your personal credit, which usually means a hard inquiry that can lower your score a few points for a while. Chase says many business cards require good to exceptional credit, a FICO score of 670 or higher. You’ll likely also sign a personal guarantee, which makes you responsible for the balance if the business can’t pay. That changes little for a sole proprietor, since you’re already personally liable for your business’s debts.
Once approved, you get what a business credit card is for, a separate record of business spending and rewards on it. Several issuers also report a business card only to business credit bureaus, so its balance stays off your personal reports, though a missed payment can still land there.
Ask how a card reports before you apply, since policies can differ card by card, even at one bank. Capital One reports activity on some of its business cards to the personal bureaus and not on others. If yours reports, time big business purchases around any mortgage or car loan application, because the lender can see that balance.
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