Bento for Business Visa® Debit Card Review for 2024

When grading business prepaid cards like the Bento for Business Visa^® Debit Card, we first consider the features offered, such as the expense management platform. Then, we also took the fees and rewards into consideration.

• Businesses that have sufficient cash on hand: Since Bento is a debit card, you need to load the card before you can use it—this makes it ideal for businesses with enough cash on hand.
• Business owners who need robust spend controls: Bento for Business offers a streamlined system that allows you to set robust controls on budget, expense categories, and more.

Bento for Business Visa^® Debit Card does not offer any rewards for new and existing users.

Bento for Business offers two types of cards:

1. Corporate cards: These are physical cards that can be used for both domestic and international transactions, so long as the transactions fall within the spend control categories determined by the admin. There are two kinds of Bento corporate cards:
   • Spend limit cards: Best for everyday use and for expenses that require users to submit receipts. You can use the Spend Limit Cards as:
     • Primary corporate cards: Ideal for regular day-to-day business expenses—these pull funds directly from your Bento account balance
     • Purchase cards: Optimal for allowing authorized personnel to make purchases
     • Travel and entertainment (T&E) cards: Best for businesses that need to manage and track all travel expenses
     • Ghost cards: Ideal for managing one-off payments to third parties without sharing primary card details or banking information
     • Subscription cards: Designed to track and prevent unwanted automatic renewals
   • Fixed value cards: Best for one-time payments or transactions that don’t require users to submit receipts. Here are two ways you can use Bento’s fixed-value cards:
     • Per diem cards: Designed to reduce the time spent on reimbursements and tracking receipts
     • Vendor management: Ideal for regular vendors or one-time vendors, protecting your banking information
2. Virtual cards: These can be created instantaneously when needed. As a quick and easy alternative to physical cards, they are best for one-off purchases, for use for a mobile wallet, and as a temporary card. They are customizable to have the same features as that of a physical card.

With Bento for Business Visa^® Debit Card, there’s no limit on how much you can load daily. You can load up to $10,000 a day via Bento transfer and do wire and automated clearing house (ACH) transfers if you need more. Additionally, all funds held within Bento are Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)-insured to $250,000 through the Bancorp Bank (Member FDIC).

Keep in mind that there is a maximum spend limit of $25,000 per day, per card, and a $500 per day ATM and cash back limit on the primary account holder’s card. Employee and utility Bento cards do not have ATM and cash back access.

• Bento Pay™: Pay vendor invoices digitally using only the payee’s email address.
• Analytics and reporting: Get a 360-degree view of your spending—gain insight into your top spending employees, get real-time transaction updates, add filters to identify different types of spend, and map spend trends over the course of your Bento account.
• Accounting integration: Connect any accounting software to Bento to reconcile your transactions directly from the dashboard. Save 90% of your bookkeeper’s time that’s normally spent on reconciling and matching receipts to transactions. You can categorize your transactions in three ways:
  • Auto categorization: Create a rule on your Bento dashboard that will allow similar transaction characteristics to auto-add elements on your dashboard, such as GL codes, class, or location
  • Bulk categorization: Manually code multiple transactions with a tag, GL code, or location at the same time
  • Individual categorization: Easily identify each transaction by clicking to get the transaction details and code each individually by GL code, tag, class, or location
• Policy enforcement settings: Automatically turn on and off your employee cards as a way to auto-enforce employees to submit receipts on time, tag transactions correctly, and add notes if necessary.
• Tag creation: Create custom tagging fields that can be used to keep track of different spend categories.
• Customized alerts: Create customized alerts via text, email, or mobile app so that they are notified of certain activities made on the Bento account.
• User uploads: Create, delete, or edit user profiles for employees—and employees can submit receipts via the mobile app. Admins can also customize the user profiles and determine what kind of access each will have.
• Receipt capture: Upload pictures of receipts via the Bento for Business mobile app. This will keep the reconciliation and matching process clean, streamlined, and paperless.

Both the admin and employees can see their transactions in real time without the need to be in front of a computer. Employees can upload their receipts, monitor the settings the admin has set for them, and track their preset spending limit. Meanwhile, admins can see multiple cards based on permissions and make some changes to include certain elements within the dashboard.

Pricing

The card is free to use for the first 60 days from when your application is approved. After the 60-day free trial, a monthly subscription shall be charged—the amount of which varies depending on your chosen package:

• Starter (up to 10 cards): $29 per month
• Team (up to 25 cards): $69 per month
• Professional (up to 100 cards): $149 per month
• Enterprise (over 100 cards): Upon request by contacting Bento at (866) 200-8455 or support@bentoforbusiness.com.

Fees

• Refund check fee: $15 (applies when you have a remaining balance in the balance at the time of card cancellation)
• International ATM withdrawal fee: $3 per transaction
• Card expedite fee: $20 per card

Bento for Business does not charge fees for the following:

• Setup
• Domestic withdrawal or debit transactions
• Domestic purchase transactions
• Decline or overdraft
• Card issuance
• Load
• Cancellation

• Bento transfer: Go to the “Funds” tab and click the “Bento Transfer” icon. Input the amount you’d like to transfer and hit “+Add fund.” Note that there is a maximum deposit limit of $10,000 per day and that processing will take one to three business days for funds to become available in your Bento account.
• Automatic deposit via Bento transfer: From the “Funds” tab, click “Scheduled Reload.” Enter the desired deposit amount and the deposit frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly). Click “Save” once everything is correct. You can also set an automatic low-balance reload. From the “Funds” tab, choose “Low-balance Reload,” set the threshold, and enter your desired deposit amount
• Bank transfer: From the “Funds” tab, click “Bank transfer.” Note the banking information provided, contact your bank to initiate an ACH transfer, and provide the necessary banking information. Once the bank processes your transfer, funds will be made available in your Bento account within one to two business days.
• Wire transfer: From the “Funds” tab, click “Wire transfer.” Note the banking information provided, contact your bank to initiate a wire transfer, and provide the required banking information. Once the bank processes your transfer, funds will be made available in your Bento account within the same business day.

You need to be a legally registered United States business with a verifiable physical location in the US to qualify for Bento for Business Visa^® Debit Card. Bento does not have a credit score requirement, and it also doesn’t ask for a personal guarantee.

Your spending limit resets at midnight local time based on the reset frequency that you set. You can view when your spending limit will reset by logging in to your Bento. Then go to the Cards tab and hover your mouse over the clock icon. A pop-up will show your reset date and time.

Yes, you can use both physical and virtual cards internationally and anywhere Visa is accepted.