Credit cards
The score you need for a business card, and what it is not doing
740 and up opens the widest set of offers, 700 to 739 covers most business cards, and below 660 the field narrows fast. The score is a gate, not the decision.
The short answer: 740 and up is where the widest set of offers and the longest promotional windows live, and 700 to 739 is comfortable for most general business cards. The longer and more useful answer is that the score is a gate, not the decision. Clearing it gets your file read. It does not get the file approved.
Every band on this page is typical rather than universal. Issuers set their own cutoffs, they tighten and loosen them with the credit cycle, and two issuers looking at the same 690 will not reach the same answer in the same week. Treat these as the shape of the market, then check the number against the actual offer sitting in front of you.
The bands, and what each one actually buys
Almost every business card is approved off your personal credit, because the business usually has no file worth reading yet. That stays true even for a card that will never show up on your personal report afterward, which is a separate question answered in whether a business card reports to your personal credit. The pull is nearly universal. The reporting is not.
| Personal score band | What typically opens up | Typical starting limit | What usually happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 740 and up | The widest set of offers and the longest promotional windows | $15,000 to $50,000 | Approved on the first pull, best pricing, and real room to negotiate the limit |
| 700 to 739 | Most general purpose business cards | $10,000 to $25,000 | Comfortable. A few of the very longest promotional windows still stay out of reach |
| 660 to 699 | A narrower field, and it narrows further as you go down the band | $3,000 to $10,000 | Approved at a smaller limit and a higher revert rate. Revenue documentation starts carrying real weight |
| 620 to 659 | A secured product or a card built for credit repair | $500 to $5,000 | Usually a deposit backed limit. All credit profiles accepted, but the terms reflect the file honestly |
| Below 620 | A secured card or a deposit backed product first | $300 to $2,500 | Build for 6 to 12 months, then reapply. Applying broadly at this level mostly buys inquiries |
Two notes on that table. The limits are typical starting limits, not promises, and an issuer will happily approve a 760 file for $5,000 if the reported revenue is small. And the jump from 699 to 700 is not a cliff in any scoring model. It is a cliff in issuer policy, which is exactly why it behaves like one from the outside.
What the band costs you in dollars
Score bands stay abstract until you price them. Suppose you carry $30,000 on a card for a year, which is an ordinary thing for a business to do between an inventory buy and the season that pays for it.
The distance between the top band and the bottom of the approvable range is roughly $3,300 a year on the same $30,000, and it recurs every year you carry a balance. That is the real value of moving 60 points. It is also why the honest advice at 640 is often to wait six months rather than apply now, because the rate you accept today is the rate you live inside for as long as you keep the card. If you would rather not carry a balance at all, the cheaper structure is usually a line of credit rather than a card.
The score is a gate, not the decision
Once your file clears the cutoff, the score stops being the interesting variable. The score answers one question: will this person pay a revolving obligation on time. Everything below answers the questions that set the limit and decide whether an approval comes back at all.
- Reported business revenue. Stated on the application and frequently verified against deposits. Past the cutoff, this drives the size of the limit more than the score does.
- Time in business. Two years is the line where a lot of policies loosen. Under six months, many issuers are underwriting you as an individual with a company name attached, and they price it that way.
- Existing obligations. Every open card, loan, and advance is visible. Total exposure across all issuers is a real ceiling, and each issuer looks at what the others already extended before deciding what is left to give.
- Recent inquiry velocity. How many hard pulls landed in the last 30 to 90 days, and how tightly they cluster. Spacing changes the reading even when the count does not.
- New accounts opened in the last 6 to 12 months. Not inquiries, accounts actually opened. Five new tradelines in eight months reads as a business running out of runway, whatever the score says about it.
The last two are the ones owners underestimate, and they are also the two most under your control this month. A 740 file with four cards opened since spring gets declined by issuers that would have approved a 690 file with nothing new on it. Approval odds are shaped by the last six months of behavior at least as much as by the number itself.
Hard inquiries, told honestly
One hard inquiry is small and temporary. It typically costs a handful of points, most scoring models stop counting it well before it drops off the report, and nobody should reorganize a business around it. If a card is right for you, do not skip it to protect five points.
Six inquiries in a month is a different object entirely. It is not six small events added together. Both the scoring models and the human reviewers read a tight cluster as a single signal, and the signal is that the applicant is trying to raise money quickly from several places at once before any of them can see the others. That reading is often correct, which is precisely why it works against you. It is also the whole mechanism behind card stacking, where applications go out inside a deliberately short window so approvals land before the new accounts report.
What to do at each band
Knowing your band is only useful if it changes what you do next. Here is the action at each one.
- 740 and up
- Do not accept the first offer as written. You have leverage on the limit, on the length of the promotional window, and on the annual fee. Ask for the limit you actually want, in writing, before you accept the account.
- 700 to 739
- Apply to one card, not four. You will very likely clear. Space any second application by 90 days and let the first account post and age before you add anything.
- 660 to 699
- Document revenue before you apply. Clean bank statements and a current profit and loss move the needle far more here than at 740, because the reviewer is looking for a reason to say yes and you have to hand it to them.
- 620 to 659
- Expect a smaller limit or a secured card. All credit profiles accepted at this level, but the terms reflect the file. Take the small limit, use it lightly, pay before the statement closes, and reapply in twelve months.
- Below 620
- Do not shop cards. Get current on everything, pay revolving balances under 30 percent before statement close, and dispute anything that is actually wrong. Then apply once, to one place.
The same rule holds in every band. One application, wait for the answer, then decide what comes next. Applying to five issuers because you are unsure which one will approve you is how a 690 file turns into a 665 file, and the 665 file gets exactly the offers you were trying to avoid. If the answer is wait, then use the wait. Building the business file takes months you would otherwise spend doing nothing, and it improves the terms you get when you finally do apply. The specific numbers different products look for are collected in our credit score requirements by product.
One more thing worth saying out loud. A weak score does not mean no capital. It means cards are the wrong first door. Revenue based products are underwritten on bank statements rather than credit, which is why a business with a 590 owner and consistent deposits can still fund. Those products are more expensive and the tradeoff is real, but it is a tradeoff, not a wall. Start with what is available when credit is the problem and price it honestly against waiting.
How Exp Capital works this
Exp Capital Solutions brokers business financing. We do not issue cards, we do not set anyone's cutoff, and we cannot move your score. What we can do is read your file the way an underwriter will, tell you which band you are actually sitting in, and shop the file to funding partners with the total cost of every offer written out next to each other. Plenty of the time the right answer on this page is a card we make nothing on, or six months of waiting. We say that anyway, because a client who takes the wrong product this quarter is not a client next year.