9 things to know about the Ramp corporate card

If you’re looking for a corporate credit card that allows you to manage your business expenses, earn rewards and save money with customized spending insights, you should know about the Ramp Visa® Corporate Card*.

Ramp offers a robust suite of features for small- and medium-sized businesses, including up to 1.5 percent cash back on all spending, built-in spend control and access to more than $175,000 in partner rewards. This no-annual-fee business card also has no late fees, foreign transaction fees or even card replacement fees.

If you’re thinking of signing up, here are nine things to know about the Ramp Corporate Card that may help you make up your mind:

1. No personal guarantee is required

Most applications for today’s best business credit cards for startups ask for the business owner’s Social Security Number, which generally means you’re personally guaranteeing your company’s debt. As a result, any missed or late payments might be added to your own credit report — and if your business defaults, you’ll still have to fork over any unpaid balance on the card. In fact, your card issuer could come after your personal assets, including your home, to recoup some of its losses.

The Ramp Corporate Card, however, is one of the few business credit cards with no personal guarantee from the business owner. In other words, holding the Ramp card ensures your personal finances and credit will remain intact in the event your business fails.

2. It offers a high credit limit

Unlike many business credit cards, Ramp doesn’t conduct a credit check during the application process. Instead, Ramp determines credit limits based on your company’s cash balance linked to Ramp.

What’s more, Ramp advertises credit limits can be up to 30 times higher than what’s offered at its competitors. Having a high-limit business credit card can give you the flexibility you need to invest in the success and growth of your enterprise, whether that’s purchasing new equipment or covering day-to-day expenses in a pinch.

3. You’ll get unlimited employee cards

Rather than charging for each individual cardholder, Ramp supplies virtual cards and physical cards for employees as requested, providing added security against fraud. To streamline the approval process when someone on your team needs to make a purchase, Ramp also sends those requests directly to the relevant manager via email, SMS or Slack message.

From how much an employee can spend to how long a card stays active, you maintain full control over company spending and monitor every transaction in real time. You can also enable them to automatically decline any purchases that fall outside of company policies.

4. It offers automatic receipt-matching for easy expensing

Like other expense-management startups, such as the BILL Divvy Corporate Card, Ramp’s platform addresses a common pain point among many small- and medium-sized businesses: The time-consuming chore of manual expense report processing. Ramp instantly requests and collects receipts at the time of purchase and allows users to submit them via SMS or email, then automatically matches them to the right transaction.

In addition, Ramp can sync with various accounting software, including QuickBooks and NetSuite. This lets you create rules that automate tasks such as expense categorization and account reconciliation. Ramp says that these features can significantly speed up the month-end closing process.

5. It can help reduce spending with AI analytics

Ramp’s AI technology analyzes your company’s spending data and looks for ways to help you save money by eliminating duplicate subscriptions, identifying supplier price increases, finding unclaimed rewards and providing visibility through real-time spending trends across your entire business. This gives you a big-picture view of upcoming payments and helps you forecast spending more accurately over time.

6. You’ll earn up to 1.5% cash back on every purchase

Ramp stands out among business cards by offering a straightforward 1.5 percent cash back on all purchases, with no caps or category restrictions. In terms of cash back business cards with no annual fee, this is a solid rate.

7. You’ll never pay interest

The Ramp Corporate Card isn’t a traditional business credit card. Rather, it’s a charge card, which means you have to pay your balance in full each month. Eliminating even the ability to accrue interest charges by using the Ramp card could save your business significant amounts of money over time.

8. You can’t carry a balance

Ramp’s 30-day payment terms mean that, in addition to never paying interest, you also never have the option to carry a balance. If the inability to carry a balance leaves you with very little wiggle room in your budget, it could hamper your efforts to grow the business or manage short-term cash flow issues when they arise.

Depending on the type of business you run and what stage it’s in, you’ll have to decide whether the Ramp card’s potential interest savings outweighs the flexibility to pay over time when you need to.

9. If offers valuable features, but not luxury ones

Ramp inarguably offers a ton of valuable tools for businesses — such as Slack integration, category spend controls and vendor management — all at no additional cost to its customers. Ramp refers to this as an “all-in-one solution” because, through its platform, cardholders not only get 1.5 percent cash back on all spending, unlimited users and cards and no annual fees, but access to finance automation tools, accounting integrations, automated receipt matching and more.

However, the Ramp card falls short in its lack of travel or lifestyle perks that a handful of other business credit cards offer. Also, the Ramp card doesn’t offer a welcome bonus to new cardholders. If you’re looking for a corporate credit card that epitomizes luxury and will get you flight upgrades or exclusive access to events, this card might not be for you.

Instead, consider something from the American Express corporate card program, or even a small business card like The Business Platinum Card® from American Express.

The bottom line

With the promise of getting set up in less than 15 minutes — and the possibility of saving a significant amount of money with Ramp’s advanced savings reports — the Ramp Corporate Card is certainly worth considering. But the Ramp card falls a bit short when it comes to the premium benefits offered by some of the best small business credit cards on the market, like some of the more popular American Express business cards.

Whether the Ramp Visa Corporate Card is right for you and your business depends on what matters to you more: comprehensive, automated accounting and expense management with a no-frills (but potentially lucrative) cash back card or a top-tier business credit card with flashy perks and more flexible payment options. The choice is yours.

*The information about the Ramp Visa® Corporate Card has been collected independently by Bankrate. The card details have not been reviewed or approved by the card issuer.