The 6 Best Business Credit Cards for Doctors [2023]

Becoming a doctor is one of the most well-respected, highly-compensated career paths. And if you’re comfortable committing a good chunk of your life to school, training, and fellowships, it could be a great fit for you.

In the medical world, most doctors are either employed by a company or have their own practices. If you have your own private practice, you can certainly be considered both a businessperson and a doctor.

Being your own boss has a number of perks, but it also has a slew of responsibilities. That’s why doctors with their own practices have a lot to worry about, including paying for numerous business expenses.

So in this guide, we’ve done a ton of research into what types of expenses doctors with private practices have, and we’ve come up with several credit card options that we think you’ll like.

Let’s get started!

What To Look for in a Business Credit Card for Doctors

So how did we figure out what types of business credit cards doctors would like the most?

To start, a doctor will have expenses that really aren’t eligible for bonus categories, regardless of which credit card they have, including malpractice insurance, professional advisors like accountants, business taxes, and payroll.

Then, we enter the world of bonus category-eligible purchases that can constitute a small fortune! These include office equipment, supplies, rent, software, and marketing (at least initially).

Indeed, these expenses can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, so you’ll want to make sure your purchases are optimized to the best of your ability.

The 6 Best Business Credit Cards for Doctors — Summary

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The 3 Best Overall Business Cards for Doctors

The best business cards for doctors will be focused on rewarding office equipment, software, and marketing spending. Sure, there are bound to be other business categories doctors spend significant sums of money on, but many of these are non-bonused.

We’ll walk you through our favorite business cards to set your private practice up for success!

1. The Business Platinum Card^® from American Express

Hot Tip: Check to see if you’re eligible for a huge welcome bonus offer of up to 170,000 points with the Amex Business Platinum. The current public offer is 120,000 points. (This targeted offer was independently researched and may not be available to all applicants.)

The Amex Business Platinum card, right now, is the best business card in our opinion for doctors. Start off with a huge welcome bonus and earn 5x Membership Rewards points per $1 spent on flights and prepaid hotels at Amex Travel.

As a doctor, you might have large purchases here and there, and the Amex Business Platinum card earns 1.5x on eligible purchases in key business categories, as well as on purchases of $5,000 or more everywhere else (up to $2 million in purchases per calendar year).

Next up is the incredible lounge access you’ll get through the American Express Global Lounge Collection:

Surprisingly, the Chase card that competes with this card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve^®, only offers Priority Pass lounge access. This just highlights how awesome of a travel companion the Amex Business Platinum card is.

In addition, you’ll get up to $200 annual airline fee credit, up to $400 in statement credits for U.S. purchases with Dell (2 equal credits of $200 semi-annually), up to $360 in Indeed credits, up to $150 in Adobe credits, $189 in CLEAR Plus credit, and up to $120 in wireless credits.

This card also offers access to Amex’s famous Fine Hotels & Resorts benefit program, Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy Gold status upon enrollment, a 35% points rebate on flights through Amex Travel (up to 1,000,000 points back per calendar year), and a Global Entry/TSA PreCheck application fee credit.

You can even integrate your expenses into QuickBooks seamlessly by using the online tools with your card.

Why We Like Earning Amex Membership Rewards Points

We talked a lot about the benefits of the Amex Business Platinum card, but we haven’t really touched on the value proposition of Amex points.

The short of it is that Amex Membership Rewards has the most valuable points out there, and they can be used for luxury travel via transfers to the American Express transfer partners.

You can also use your Amex points for gift cards, charity, Amazon, cash-back, travel booked through Amex Travel, and more. But the drawback of these redemptions is that you won’t get anywhere near the same value as you would when booking business and first class flights!

2. Ink Business Cash^® Credit Card

The Ink Business Cash card is our runner-up choice, and it’s truly an elegant credit card. This $0 annual fee card empowers you to earn up to 5% cash-back on crucial business categories!

Specifically, you’ll earn 5% cash-back on up to $25,000 spent in combined purchases every cardmember year on these categories:

• Office supply stores
• Cellular phone, landline, internet, and cable TV services

You’ll also earn 2% cash-back on up to $25,000 spent in combined purchases every cardmember year at restaurants and gas stations.

Lastly, you’ll earn 1% cash-back elsewhere. Of course, your cash-back is convertible to Ultimate Rewards points, at a 1%/1x ratio, as long as you have an Ultimate Rewards card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred^® Card.

Undoubtedly, the most eye-catching category is the office supply stores category which effectively allows you to accumulate up to 125,000 Ultimate Rewards points if you max out the 5% cash-back/5x points categories.

Also, this card bestows impressive perks for a no-annual-fee card, including purchase protection, primary rental car coverage, and other travel insurance perks. Of course, employee cards are at no additional fee, and you’ll have zero liability fraud protection, too.

Lastly, you’ll have a 0% introductory APR benefit that will help you bring your business online and defer any interest payments on your balances, which could save you thousands of dollars!

Why We Like Earning Chase Ultimate Rewards Points

Ultimate Rewards points are one of our favorite points systems out there, and they’re among the most valuable.

It’s super-easy to earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points, and it’s super-easy to redeem them, too!

You can use them for cash-back, goods, gift cards, and travel. If you have an Ultimate Rewards credit card, you can book travel for 25% to 50% more value (1.25 to 1.5 cents per point) using the Chase travel portal OR our personal favorite, transfer them to the Chase airline and hotel partners for phenomenal value.

3. American Express^® Business Gold Card

Hot Tip: Check to see if you’re eligible for a huge welcome bonus offer of up to 110,000 points with the Amex Business Gold card! The current public offer is 70,000 points. (This targeted offer was independently researched and may not be available to all applicants.)

The Amex Business Gold card arguably offers the most well-rounded business card spending categories in the entire world. We’ll elaborate more, but to summarize, you can get 4x Amex Membership Rewards points per $1 spent on popular bonus categories.

On up to $150,000 in combined purchases per year, you can get 4x points on the top 2 categories where your business spends the most each month from a list of these bonus categories:

• Airfare purchased from airlines
• U.S. purchases for advertising in select media
• U.S. purchases made from select technology providers of computer hardware, software, and cloud solutions
• U.S. purchases at gas stations
• U.S. purchases at restaurants
• U.S. purchases for shipping

This is an incredible list of bonus categories since, as a doctor, you might be spending a large sum of money on marketing, advertising, and technology.

However, this card is one of the only cards that offer bonus points on numerous technology purchases including hardware and software.

As you know, software subscriptions for your private practice are incredibly expensive, so putting your spending on this card could multiply your points quickly.

Your points earnings will adjust every month automatically, so no need to select any bonus categories or predict your spending habits.

This card provides secondary car rental coverage, trip delay insurance, purchase protection, extended warranty coverage, and no preset spending limit.

As you might expect, your Amex points earned from this card are Membership Rewards points, which, at the end of the day, are the most valuable transferable points, beating out Chase, Citi, and Capital One.

Hot Tip: If the Amex Business Gold card seems like a great fit, see our tips and strategies to use to get the highest welcome bonus offer possible!

3 Alternative Business Credit Cards for Doctors

There’s no cure-all solution for the best business credit cards for all doctors that covers all specialties, all practice sizes, and all expenses.

However, it’s understandable that you might not find as much value in, say, advertising categories if you’ve already established your practice and can’t take any more clients.

So in this next section, we’ll walk you through our favorite alternative business credit cards for doctors.

1. Ink Business Unlimited^® Credit Card

The Ink Business Unlimited card offers unmistakably simple rewards with a flat 1.5% cash-back, no annual fee, no bonus categories, and no rewards caps!

This credit card’s 1.5% cash-back can be converted to 1.5x points if you have an Ultimate Rewards card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.

Also, this card doesn’t have any caps on earning and comes with a 0% introductory APR period, as well as a huge welcome bonus!

2. The Blue Business^® Plus Credit Card from American Express

The Amex Blue Business Plus card is similar to the Ink Business Unlimited card, except the rewards multiplier you’ll earn is slightly better, though this card comes with a bonus cap.

You’ll earn 2x Membership Rewards points (around 4.4% return on spend) on up to $50,000 in everyday business purchases every calendar year. After that, you’ll earn 1x.

You’ll also find common benefits like no annual fee, and employee cards at no additional cost (see rates and fees).

The only drawback of this card is that the cap of $50,000 per year is easily surpassed for most doctors’ private practices.

3. Ink Business Preferred^® Credit Card

We are huge fans of the Ink Business Preferred card for most instances. Between the gigantic welcome bonus worth around $2,000, the 3x points categories, and the cell phone insurance, it’s easy to fall in love with this card.

However, the spending categories don’t perfectly align with the most common purchases doctors make, which is why this card isn’t at the top of our list.

You’ll earn 3x Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on up to $150,000 every cardmember year in these bonus categories:

• Advertising on social media and search engines
• Travel
• Shipping
• Internet, cable, and phone

As you can see, the most applicable bonus category will probably be advertising, which isn’t a universal expense, especially if you’re an established, popular doctor.

Still, you could get tremendous value through benefits like the cell phone coverage that offers up to 3 claims per rolling 12-month period up to $600 per claim with a $100 deductible per claim.

Plus, you’ll find primary rental car insurance, trip interruption and cancellation insurance, trip delay insurance, purchase protection, extended warranty coverage, and no foreign transaction fees.

Final Thoughts

Being a doctor is difficult. In many ways, being a doctor and having a private practice unleashes a totally different set of challenges, including managing your business.

That’s why we filtered out all the noise, researched the top business expenses from medical private practices, and identified the best cards to suit these needs.

In addition to racking up lots of points, you could potentially make use of travel benefits like hotel elite status and lounge access, as well as non-travel perks like purchase protection, QuickBooks integrations for bookkeeping, and so much more.

Hopefully, you found this guide useful to help you figure out which business credit cards are the best fit for your medical practice!

For rates and fees of The Business Platinum Card^® from American Express, click here.
For rates and fees of the American Express^® Business Gold Card, click here.
For rates and fees of The Blue Business^® Plus Credit Card from American Express, click here.