Your business account comes with your first card, and for most founders that is a debit card. It pays for software, ads and travel, it looks like a credit card, and day to day you barely notice the difference. It is still not a credit line. If you want to work in the US with limits, payment terms and rewards programmes, you need a real credit card, and you don't get one with your articles of organization. You get it through a credit history that first has to be built in the US. The road there follows a fixed order. Know it, and you avoid applications that come too early and can drag down your score.
Debit card and credit card: two different legal transactions
The US consumer protection agency, the CFPB, sums up the difference in one sentence: with a credit card you borrow money and have to pay it back by the due date; with a debit card you spend money that is already in your account. Your LLC's debit card is therefore access to your balance, not credit. That is also why it does not build a credit history: nothing is repaid, so there is nothing a credit bureau could record as an on-time repayment.
A second difference concerns protection against misuse. The well-known liability tiers for debit cards are set out in Regulation E, which by its own definition applies only to accounts opened primarily for personal, family or household purposes. Your LLC's business account is not covered. Who pays for a fraudulent charge on the business account is therefore mainly governed by your bank's account agreement.
Credit cards are different, business cards included. Regulation Z, the rulebook for consumer credit, largely exempts credit for business purposes. But according to the official interpretation of 12 CFR 1026.3, two provisions apply to all credit cards, including those used for business: the rules on issuing cards and the liability cap for unauthorized use. Under 12 CFR 1026.12, the cardholder is liable for no more than 50 dollars or the amount fraudulently spent before the issuer is notified, whichever is lower. There is only one exception: when an issuer provides ten or more cards to the employees of one organization, the issuer and the company may agree on different liability. For a single-member LLC this hardly matters.
Everything else you may know from US consumer protection, the disclosure duties and many limits on interest and fees, does not apply to business cards. With a business card, the issuer's small print is what counts.
The step in between: a business card without a personal guarantee
Between the debit card and the classic credit card there is now a step that is the first real move for many LLC owners without a US credit history. Mercury offers its account holders a business charge card, the IO card, issued by Patriot Bank, N.A. Charge card means the balance is paid in full; credit over several months is not part of the deal.
The terms, as Mercury describes them, are interesting for non-Americans: no personal guarantee, and no credit check at sign-up, so your personal score is neither considered nor touched. The limit is based on your balances at Mercury and, if you link them, at other banks too. New customers with lower balances start with daily repayment; from a balance of 15,000 dollars you can switch to 30-day payment terms. All spending earns 1.5 percent cashback. According to Mercury, you can see in the credit card section of your dashboard whether your LLC is eligible.
The key sentence is in the FAQ: Mercury reports the IO card's payment history to Experian, Equifax and Dun & Bradstreet, explicitly as business credit bureaus. That builds a credit history for your LLC, not for you. It is real progress, but it is a different file from the one the big card issuers care about. You need a running Mercury account in any case; how Mercury currently checks US activity is covered in the article on proof of operations.
Two files: your LLC's credit and your own
In the US, two credit worlds run side by side. Experian describes the split clearly: business credit scores run on a scale of 0 to 100, personal scores on a scale of 350 to 850, and the two numbers have nothing to do with each other. Experian Small Business explicitly gives no access to personal credit data, only to the business database, where company reports can be searched and bought.
The big card issuers still look at you when you apply for a business card. Their own documents show this in two places.
On the page for the Ink Business Preferred, Chase says in essence that you are responsible, together with the business, for repaying all balances. The pricing and terms are even clearer: whoever applies is liable personally, individually and jointly with the company, even after later leaving the business. So the business card is not a liability shield of the LLC but an obligation attached to you.
For the Business Gold Card, American Express explains the application like this: applying may affect your business credit, the decision comes without an impact on your personal credit, and if you accept the card, expect an impact on your personal score.
What follows for you: your LLC's credit card rests on your personal US credit. And at the start, you simply have none.
Why your US score starts at zero
FICO only counts what is in your US credit report. According to myFICO, a valid score only exists once the report contains at least one account that has been open for six months or more and at least one account reported to the bureau within the last six months. Whatever the credit bureau in your home country knows about you is not a US account and does not meet this condition. Your score only comes into being with the first US lender that reports to Experian, Equifax or TransUnion.
How it is built from there, FICO discloses openly. The five factors are payment history (35 percent), amounts owed relative to your limit (30 percent), length of credit history (15 percent), credit mix (10 percent) and new credit (10 percent). So two thirds of your score depend on paying on time and not maxing out your limit. You control both from day one.
The number you need: ITIN instead of SSN
Anyone applying for credit in the US normally gives their Social Security Number. As a non-American without US residence, you don't have one. The alternative is the ITIN, the IRS's nine-digit taxpayer identification number. According to its own description, the IRS issues it to people who need a US taxpayer number for federal tax purposes but cannot get an SSN.
Three points from the same IRS page are worth knowing. The ITIN does not authorize work in the US, it does not change immigration status, and it is not valid as identification outside the federal tax system. And it expires if it is not used on a federal tax return for three consecutive years. If you build US credit on your ITIN, keep an eye on keeping it active.
Your LLC itself does not need the ITIN. According to the IRS, your company's EIN can only be applied for online if the responsible party has an SSN or ITIN and the principal place of business is in the US; without those, the application goes by phone, fax or mail. For the credit card, however, your personal number is what matters, because the issuer checks you personally.
Whether an issuer accepts an ITIN is its own decision. In an article from October 2025, Experian names American Express and Capital One as major issuers that accept an ITIN instead of an SSN. That is a snapshot, not a promise; application terms can change and should be checked with the issuer before every application.
The order: personal first, then business
These building blocks give you the route, and it is less spectacular than many online guides claim.
Step one is a secured credit card. The CFPB explains the principle in its guide to building credit: you place a deposit with the bank, the bank holds it and gives you a credit limit of exactly that amount. Many of these cards offer a path to switch to a regular credit card after a period of regular payments. And the CFPB gives one piece of advice that matters more than any card choice: ask the issuer whether it reports to the credit bureaus. A card that doesn't report builds nothing. According to the CFPB, each payment on the card restores the available limit up to the amount of the deposit.
Step two is discipline. In the same guide the CFPB lists what matters: pay on time, don't get too close to your limit, and as a rule of thumb use no more than 30 percent of your total credit limit. Your score can also drop if you apply for and open too many accounts in a short time. That is exactly the classic mistake of founders who want the big cards as fast as possible: lots of applications in a short window, before the report even shows a history.
Step three is the first unsecured card, once you reach the six months FICO requires for a score and your report shows a clean payment history. A higher total limit lowers your utilization, and your credit history gets longer every month.
Step four is the business card for your LLC, applied for with the company's EIN and your personal credit behind it. How well the cards fit your business depends on the terms the issuers publish themselves. Two examples, as of September 2026 on the issuers' websites:
- The American Express Business Gold has an annual fee of 375 dollars. It earns four times the points in the two of six categories where you spend the most in each billing cycle, on the first 150,000 dollars of combined purchases per calendar year, then one point per dollar. It has no preset spending limit; according to Amex, your spending power adjusts based on purchase, payment and credit history. With Pay Over Time, eligible purchases can also be paid in instalments up to a separate limit.
- The Chase Ink Business Preferred has an annual fee of 95 dollars. It earns three times the points on the first 150,000 dollars of combined purchases per account year in the categories shipping, advertising on social media and search engines, travel, and internet, cable and phone services. There are no foreign transaction fees, which counts in daily life for LLC owners who live outside the US.
What limit an issuer gives you, and whether it approves you at all, is decided case by case. None of the major issuers publishes reliable figures on this, and nobody can seriously predict them.
Keep an eye on your report
If you are building US credit, read your own report regularly. According to the FTC, the three major bureaus have made it permanent that anyone can get their report free once a week through AnnualCreditReport.com. Without an SSN, Experian asks for the request in writing, according to its own instructions, with your full name, date of birth, your addresses for the last two years, a copy of your ID and a recent proof of address such as a utility bill or bank statement. Report errors for review straight away; the CFPB explicitly advises actively getting inaccuracies corrected.
What the card changes about your tax position
A US credit card is a means of payment, not a tax structure. The expenses your LLC pays with the card belong in the company's books, and you should file the receipts as carefully as those for the account; you need the figures for the annual IRS filing anyway, as the article on Form 5472 shows. Points, cashback and payment terms change nothing about where your LLC's profits are taxed. That question is answered by the tax rules of your country of residence.
The route at a glance
- Open a business account with a debit card as the base for every further step; what US banks require for it today is in the banking guide.
- Look at a business card without a guarantee, such as a charge card that reports to business credit bureaus and starts your LLC's credit history.
- Get an ITIN and keep it active, because the major issuers check you personally; the LLC alone no longer gets you an ITIN today.
- Start with a secured card from an issuer that reports to the three bureaus.
- Pay on time and stay below 30 percent utilization, no strings of applications.
- After six months, move to an unsecured card, then to your LLC's business card with your personal credit behind it.
How we guide you along this route, from the ITIN to the first business card, is on the Credit Builder page.