If you want to keep your work expenses separate from your own personal expenditure, you may wish to consider a business prepaid card.
You may find that you tend to run up a lot of expenses associated with your job, and that sometimes you fail to claim back these expenses, due to losing track of your expenditure. This means that you potentially lose out of your own pocket, as well as the business not showing a true reflection of its outgoings.
That is why a prepaid card for your business may be worth thinking about. It may give you greater control over your work related expenses so that you can keep them and your personal expenditure separate.
But first of all, what is a prepaid card?
Whether it is a business prepaid card or one solely for personal use, a prepaid card potentially offers you many of the benefits associated with a credit card, but without the debt:
- it is a plastic card that can be used for online and telephone purchases as well as in shops, restaurants etc in the UK and many places abroad wherever the brand’s acceptance mark is shown (for example, if it is a prepay MasterCard, it will be accepted anywhere that that acceptance mark is displayed globally);
- generally you can use it to withdraw money from ATMs:
However, unlike a credit card:
- typically, no credit check is needed, so even people with poor credit history can apply;
- you can only spend what you have actually loaded on to the card (note that as with many plastic cards, there may be a daily limit as to how much cash you can withdraw). Once you have spent the funds, you simply top it up again, rather than running up debt;
- you may be able to run an associated e-bank account – some prepay card providers such as Speed-e-card offer this facility – meaning you can almost manage it like a bank account.
So, if you want to keep your work and private finances completely independent of each other, then thinking about a business prepaid card may be an idea.
