I’ve written quite a bit about credit and debit cards over the last few years, with reviews many of the popular credit card offers available to consumers and small businesses. Most of these offers require a good, very good, or excellent credit history. With this requirement, consumers trying to build their credit from zero or to repair their credit from past mistakes or problems have a different set of options. A popular solution for building credit is to apply for a prepaid debit card and build the credit history needed to upgrade to one of the more lucrative offers at a later time. For small businesses, the variety of prepaid cards to manage spending is more limited than what is available for consumers. The best offer available today by a wide margin is the PEX Visa® Prepaid Card for Business.
Small business owners find it convenient to keep all spending confined to one account. Spending by all employees can be managed in one place online. The owner can visit the PEX Visa® Prepaid Card for Business website and create an account to manage all card limits and expenditures. Each issued card within the business can have its own spending limit. Here are some of the features of this card, in a chart from the PEX website.
As with most prepaid debit cards, PEX charges a variety of fees for using the PEX Visa® Prepaid Card for Business. The fees a reasonable in comparison to other cards, and with total spending across all of a business’s issued cards beyond a monthly threshold, the major fee disappears. These are the most prevalent fees this card carries:
- $7.50 month maintenance fee per card (waived any month thee business spends $50,000 collectively)
- $49.95 one-time account set up fee
- $5 fee to transfer money from your PEX account to your bank account
- $5 card replacement fee
All new cardholders will receive the first two months of services free of charge no matter how much is spent. Compared to the fees for some consumer prepaid debit cards, this card is actually quite inexpensive. That doesn’t mean however that this card is a good choice, but if your business could benefit from a centralized payment management system, PEX offers a compelling solution.
For any small business that has the high-quality credit to qualify for a small business credit card, the SimplyCash® Business Card from American Express OPEN or Ink Cash℠ Business is the way to go. But if excellent credit is something a business hopes to have in the future, the PEX Visa® Prepaid Card for Business is a solid option.
Updated January 9, 2012 and originally published September 23, 2011. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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