Best Corporate Credit Cards in Australia Compared

Corporate credit cards are commonly used by large businesses and organisations as a way of making business payments, managing cash flow and enabling staff to pay for expenses. They're usually only offered to businesses with a high turnover (e.g. over $10m), or businesses that require a large number of employee cards.

For smaller companies, a business credit card facility is usually sufficient.

In many cases, corporate credit cards are in fact charge cards. In fact, if you have a corporate card from either American Express or Diners Club it will almost certainly be a charge card.

Money.com.au’s credit card and payments expert, Brad Kelly, says there are some significant benefits for large companies that use charge cards as their corporate cards.

Because of the complexity of rolling out corporate credit cards at a large organisation, it's important to make sure you choose the right card scheme from the start. Here are some of the key things to look for.

Rewards program

This offers your organisation the ability to earn credit card reward points on spending and access perks and exclusive offers. Some programs (e.g. Amex) offer you the ability to convert points to a number of different frequent flyer credit card programs.

Monitor spend and expense policy compliance

A good corporate credit card program will give your finance team the ability to track spending at a card level and assess it for compliance with company expense and travel policies.

Card-level limits

Corporate cards generally offer the organisation the ability to set individual limits on cards issued to different employees. For example, cards given to different levels of management.

Reports to analyse and forecast expenses

Corporate card providers will give your organisation access to reports with detailed breakdowns on spending and payments, plus forecasts that will help your finance team with planning.

Integration with finance software

Most corporate credit card programs will offer integration with common financial software. But some providers do this better than others.

Virtual cards

Having physical corporate cards can create hassle and security risk for organisations and is often not necessary depending on how the card is used. Some corporate card programs (NAB and HSBC, for example) facilitate the issuing of virtual cards to staff. This can either be a card that only exists on a digital wallet or a unique account and card number that’s generated for each transaction.

Unauthorised use insurance

This protects organisations from misuse of their corporate credit cards and is sometimes included as a complimentary extra with corporate card schemes (e.g. CommBank).

Travel insurance

Some corporate credit cards will include travel insurance that offers cover for a range of risks relating to corporate travel. This generally only applies to travel that was paid for using the card, although the cover provided through certain Amex corporate cards will apply regardless of whether the card itself was used to book the travel.

Lounge access

Higher-end corporate credit cards often offer access to airport lounges. The specific lounges you can access will depend on the card provider and the specific card you have.

Business subscriptions and other perks

Corporate credit cards often come with extras like media subscriptions or early access to corporate event tickets.

Dedicated support

As a corporate client, you typically have access to dedicated support from the card provider that is not available to small business or personal customers.

For corporate clients with large numbers of cards issued to staff, it’s particularly important to pay attention to card fees that are applied at an individual card level, such as:

• Annual card fee (per card)
• Rewards program fee
• Additional cardholder fee for issuing new cards
• Replacement card fee

Plus there are the usual credit card fees that will also typically apply to corporate cards, including:

• Foreign transaction fees (FX fees)
• Cash advance fees
• Late payments fees