If you own a small business, chances are that you’re paying business expenses on a regular basis. By paying with a point-earning credit card, you could be earning frequent flyer points for these payments!
One new member, a small business owner, requests advice on maximising their credit card point-earning potential.
I’m a small business owner, convenience store, and I have several suppliers I can pay by credit card. I’ve started investigating them and so far they all incur a 1% fee on an invoice. My question is, is there a card I should be looking at which the positives of the points earning will outweigh the negatives?
Paying suppliers by card can be a great way to accumulate points on purchases you’re making anyway. Most businesses accept payments by MasterCard and Visa. Some also accept Amex. Up to one point per dollar can be earned on MasterCard or Visa cards, and up to 1.5 points can be generally be earned for every dollar spent on Amex. As a business owner making regular payments, there is a lot of earning potential there!
Some suppliers do charge a credit card surcharge. In some cases this surcharge may be tax deductible, but it pays to look carefully at both the surcharge and the number of points you’ll be earning. It may not always be economical to pay the surcharge just to earn frequent flyer points.
Points can even be earned for paying tax. Although many credit cards no longer award full points on payments to the Australian Tax Office (ATO), there are still a handful of cards that do. The ATO accepts payments by Visa, MasterCard and Amex although it does charge a small surcharge for card payments.
There is also the potential to pay your taxes by credit card (though the number of cards that let you do this are decreasing fast)
Many AFF members have been able to fly in Business class exclusively on frequent flyer points, by paying for business expenses using credit cards. One small business owner was able to redeem a million Qantas points for flights last year alone.
Like you, I am a small business owner with a foot in a couple of camps. For frequent flyer points I now mostly use Citi Signature that does not direct sweep (you can get a QF one too). I can then transfer these points to VA or SQ. I also use ANZ Black with direct sweep to QF. You will be surprised how quickly points accumulate. Put it this way, one year, +1 and I spent about one million points on QF domestic business class flights.
It may require a little effort, but it seems the points chase is well and truly worthwhile!
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