The popularity of prepaid business debit cards for small business owners is widespread and growing rapidly, especially in the United States. And this is happening for a good reason.
Prepaid debit cards for businesses provide the same convenience you, as a small business owner gets with a credit card, while also helping you control your spending. Thus with a prepaid business debit card, you can load a fixed amount of funds onto the card, so you can only spend and invest the funds that are already on the card.
This makes it a perfect tool for business owners who need control of their employees’ business spending. And also you can use these cards to manage and maintain your money without even using the best banks.
Prepaid business debit cards are completely developed expense management solutions for any business whether it is micro and medium businesses. If you want to start using a prepaid business debit card, though, you should conduct research on the best cards out there.
To give you a head start on that research, we have outlined five of the best-prepaid business debit cards for small business owners in this post.
Most businesses are required to provide employees or contractors a way to pay for items necessary to do their jobs. Office supplies, travel, car rental, gas, and vehicle maintenance, even petty cash – they are all are regular costs of doing business for most small companies. And the owner of the company certainly cannot be the only one making those purchases.
Therefore, prepaid business debit cards can be a cost-effective solution to the problem. If you are not familiar with prepaid business debit cards, they are closest to regular bank debit cards. They use the Mastercard or Visa networks and can be used for purchases like any Mastercard or Visa debit cards.
They are just not attached to a bank account. Instead, they are funded, or “prepaid”, by depositing money on the card. For prepaid business debit cards, they are typically funded through a transfer from the business’ bank account.
Although credit cards used for employee purchases, prepaid business debit cards can offer some different benefits. And also, prepaid business debit cards, and particularly the top picks on our list, generally offer better and more flexible control of the amounts available on cards issued to employees.
Second, prepaid business debit cards do not expose the business’ or owner’s credit when the card is used by an employee. Because prepaid business debit cards are not an extension of credit by the issuer, they can also generally be activated and inactivated much more quickly than credit cards when having a requirement for the credit card.
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A business prepaid debit card takes part in assisting small businesses to maintain and manage their business expenses, prepare tax returns and track employee spending. We have, therefore, assembled a list of the best-prepaid business debit cards made just for small business owners.
Best for – All-around prepaid best business debit cards.
Bento for Business earns our top pick for its rich features and low cost. It is much more than a prepaid business debit card. It is a cash management tool and company of two employee use this. Bento merges up prepaid debit cards with an online cash management tool.
A company or business is entirely free to request unlimited Bento prepaid debit cards for its employees and contractors. The online tool acts as a central hub to regulate each of the prepaid debit cards.
With Bento, the cost depends on the number of cards you will need, as it often does with other card companies. You can order up to two cards for free, and if you decide you need more than that you will pay a fee.
In addition, this card comes with a mobile app and an informative dashboard, so you can analyze and manage employee expenditures.
Additionally, you also are able to avail of its free version for 60 days to determine if it works for your business before buying it. Other features and options include the capability to set budget controls for each card, bookkeeping tools, and FDIC-insured funds.
Lucrative Features In Bento For Business
Unlimited debit cards, activate and deactivate individual cards, set and regulate money spending limits, set purchase category limits, manage cards online or in a smartphone app, integrate with QuickBooks, receive alerts for unauthorized purchases and track receipts that can be uploaded.
Fees: Free for up to two debit cards. Beyond two cards, the price differs based on the number of prepaid cards.
Card Limits: Up to $25,000 per day spending limit for the account, you set the limit for each card.
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Best for a Best low-cost option.
Dash is ideal and the best low-fee option for businesses. In terms of features, Dash organizes its account into three parts such as sending and spending money afterward reviewing your transactions. Here is each and every employee or contractor is eligible to use Dash Prepaid Mastercard.
The business can then send money from what Dash calls the Vault to each card on request or automatically which is based on budgets and spending limits. The cards also offer you the functionality to set a limit for individual spending by a card.
Transactions can be monitored, receipts stored electronically and transactions downloaded into your best accounting software for small businesses whether it is QuickBooks online or any other accounting tool.
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Dash offers a convenient prepaid which is among the best business debit cards for small businesses with numerous, spread-out employees or contractors. You keep your account funded and your workers request funds through the mobile app. This makes controlling expenses easy and convenient. Dash is a prepaid business debit card, but it doubles as a full expense management software solution and the use of that software is free.
Features – Unlimited number of prepaid business debit cards, control spending by card and category, real-time monitoring of expenses, integration with accounting software, automatic reload of cards, attach photos of receipts, etc.
Fees: No fee is demanded to order cards, using the Dash platform or funding the account.
Card Limits: $100,000 in one calendar month.
Best for micro to small businesses
Emburse Pre-Fund Debit Mastercard is the most customizable and one of the best business debit card solutions are available for small businesses. It handles business payments and expenses as one would expect.
A prepaid business debit card can be issued to a business location or a specific employee or contractor. More importantly, spending limits can be set and cards can be activated or deactivated in no time.
Beyond the basics, Emburse offers an API and an App that enables businesses to create virtual prepaid cards in seconds and at scale. A virtual card is for single-use to make payment for the vendor. For creating cards name and email id are used globally.
And also, cards can be created without assigning them to a specific individual (e.g., Driver #7).
Following a 30-day free trial, Emburse charges $15/card. Additional costs are charged for using the API. Emburse’s pricing differs which is based on the number of employees who will need cards.
And with the Emburse prepaid business debit card, you can have virtual or physical cards, control expense policies, order branded cards and integrate your cards with QuickBooks, Xero, Netsuite, and Intacct.
Like other prepaid business debit cards mentioned in this list, you can create role-based permissions for your cards to better control and regulate your budget.
In addition, with the Emburse prepaid business debit card, you are eligible for cashback based on your monthly transaction volume and you need not pay any foreign transaction fees.
Create cards by location and set budgets, issue debit cards to employees without asking and requiring personal information about a person, set spending limits, automate vendor payments and issue cards at scale.
Fees – $15/card plus additional costs for using the API.
Card Limits – Just check out reimburse terms and conditions on their website.
Best for Accepting payments.
Netspend’s Small Business Prepaid Mastercard is similar to other prepaid business debit cards. For example, It offers prepaid business debit cards that employees use. And the business owner has control over each of these cards in terms of spending limits and purchase categories and capable to regulate it.
And there is robust online reporting and QuickBooks integration. It does, however, offer some unique features. More importantly, businesses can accept payments to the prepaid account via what Netspend calls ProPay. ProPay is effectively able to accept payments online or via a mobile phone attachment. And even, you can also load cash onto the Netspend Small Business Prepaid Mastercard at more than 130,000 locations.
In addition, fees are typically lower than other options. The account, however, only has 10 prepaid business debit cards. And The Netspend Small Business Prepaid Mastercard completely for out for very small businesses. Netspend will charge you $9.95 per month for your first card and $1.95 for your next nine cards.
While there is a maximum of ten cards, Netspend offers you the ease of direct deposits, checks and ACH transfers to load your card. As same as Bento for Business, you can send, receive and manage money within Netspend’s mobile app.
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Netspend offers cashback with Payback Rewards, budget control, transaction alerts and more. They even offer to cover up to $10 if you fall short on a transaction, although you are responsible for paying the amount back.
Oversee employee and contractor expenses, set spending limits per card, accept payments online, in-store or via your mobile phone and export transactions to Quickbooks.
Fees – The account calls just $9.95 per month plus $1.95 for each additional debit card.
Card Limits: The maximum card balance is $25,000 once you have verified your business.
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PEX Visa Prepaid Card is considered ideal for a large and well-established business.
The PEX Visa Prepaid Card offers most of the same features and functionalities as Bento offers. Employees get debit cards on a per-project basis.
Cards can be turned off and on with the click of a mouse. And spending limits are set per card, as can purchase category limits. Pex also provides strong and robust financial reporting. Business owners and administrators seem quite pleased with PEX Visa Prepaid Card as they are capable to track business spending in real-time.
And Pex has the functionality to integrates with the best accounting software for small businesses such as QuickBooks. Besides, Pex provides an advanced API that enables businesses to integrate financial data from PEX into their own software solutions. Maybe because of this additional feature, the cost of PEX is somewhat higher than Bento.
Using PEX prepaid business debit cards is on the more expensive side, with a monthly fee of $7.50 per card. However, if you run a large business that spends at least $50,000 per month.
Plus, it has unlimited daily spending. PEX offers and provides you the flexibility to provide cards for workers or volunteers and the control to decide when, where and how they use those cards. Being a business owner with PEX Visa Prepaid Card you have the right to set rules, budgets, and track spending in real-time.
An unlimited number of debit cards, set spending limits per card, limit the categories of purchases for the card, track spending in real-time, integrate Pex with accounting software, integrate Pex expense date into other corporate systems.
Fees – $49.95 setup fee, and monthly fees starting at $75. Special pricing available for non-profit organizations.
Card Limits – $25,000 per card, with a minimum balance required of $50.
Sifting through the long lists of features that these best-prepaid business debit cards offer will probably make your head spin. Although pricing is not the only factor here, yet a good way to compare these prepaid business debit cards for small business owners is to consider how many you will need, what you will use them for and how you will reload them when required.
Definitely, many of the fees you pay (or don’t pay) are entirely dependent upon how you reload the card. For example, some allow card-to-card or ACH transfers for free, while others do not.
Moreover, pricing also depends on the number of users and how much you spend, so determine your needs and estimate how much you will pay that way. Once you do this, you will have a shorter list of options to consider and you can select one that seems the best suited to your business.
