Employee Expenses
Employee Card Comparison Tool
Compares reimbursement, debit expense cards, prepaid cards and business credit cards against your structure, spending pattern and cash position — including the disadvantages.
Takes about 4 minutes. Your answers stay in your browser, and no email address is required to see your result.
How should my team pay for things?
Best fit for your answers: Debit expense cards on the business account
Where it helps. Spending is limited to money the business already has, with a limit per card, receipt capture and no borrowing.
Where it hurts. No working capital, no credit-building, and a declined card in front of a customer if the balance runs low.
Where it helps. Hard spending ceiling per card. Useful for a specific project, an event, or a contractor.
Where it hurts. Topping up is admin, cards fail mid-purchase when empty, and fees vary. Poor fit for unpredictable spending.
Where it helps. No new product, no new risk, no application. Fine when spending is rare and small.
Where it hurts. Your team funds the business from personal money, evidence arrives late, and reconciliation is manual. It quietly becomes a retention problem.
Where it helps. Adds working capital, per-card limits, virtual cards, freeze controls and accounting sync.
Where it hurts. It is borrowing. A personal guarantee is commonly required, approval and limit are subject to assessment, and interest can easily exceed any cashback.
Mechanism, then product. If you have not written your spending policy yet, do that before you apply for anything.
Tide. Tide is relevant once you need someone other than you to see, spend or reconcile business money: role-based Team Access for a bookkeeper, debit Expense Cards for employees, receipt capture and transaction organisation.
Capital on Tap. Capital on Tap is relevant to eligible UK companies that need business credit alongside controlled employee cards: individual limits, virtual cards, real-time visibility, receipt capture and accounting integration.
Affiliate and partner disclosure: this site earns money from a small number of authorised partner campaigns, currently Tide and Capital on Tap. Partner links are tracked. We do not accept payment for a positive verdict, and we publish who should not use a product as prominently as who should.
Assumptions and limitations
- Four mechanisms are scored against your structure, purchase frequency, typical value, cash position, credit need and control requirement.
- Business-structure eligibility is applied as a hard gate, not a score penalty.
- Every mechanism shows its material disadvantages, not only its benefits.
- If answers indicate financial pressure, credit options are suppressed and free debt-advice signposting is shown instead.
- It compares mechanisms, not every product on the market, and it cannot tell you whether an application would be approved.
- Financial information on this site is general information, not regulated financial advice. We are not authorised to advise you on borrowing, banking or investments. Figures are illustrative and depend on your own circumstances.
Methodology and calculation
This tool is designed with transparency in mind. The results are calculated based on the following logic:
- Four mechanisms are scored against your inputs: business structure, purchase frequency, typical value, cash position, need for credit and control requirements.
- Business-structure eligibility is applied as a hard gate: sole traders are currently ineligible for Capital on Tap, so credit-card options are shown as unavailable rather than merely unsuitable.
- Every mechanism displays its material disadvantages, not only its benefits.
- If your answers indicate financial pressure, credit options are suppressed and free debt-advice signposting is shown instead.
Limitations and scope
- It compares mechanisms, not every product on the market.
- It cannot tell you whether an application would be approved.