Your business’s rent could be your biggest missed opportunity to earn cash back

For most small businesses, one of the greatest expenses is the physical location or rent. Depending on where your business is located, small businesses can expect to pay several hundred to several thousand dollars a month in rent. Traditionally when it comes to leveraging rent to improve the health of their business, owners have focused on reducing the cost of rent or using rent to lower their tax implications. If possible, we may recommend the same opportunities.

If you could just simply cut your rent expense to increase profitability, you would probably have done it by now. You selected your business’s physical size and location for many, many reasons. Your rent is the cost of doing business, and generally it’s a very big expense.

But, what if there was a way to earn cash back on one of your biggest expenses simply by changing the way you pay?

We’re helping forward thinking business owners earn cash back and other rewards by paying their rent with their credit card. Until Melio, this simply wasn’t possible. Now Melio will send a check or electronically deposit funds sourced from your credit card to the owner, property manager, or bank. Assuming you pay off your credit card balance each month, the advantages to paying with a credit card are numerous:

• Earn cash back or rewards on a large fixed cost
• Improve cash flow by holding on to your cash longer
• Never pay late

One of our early user’s business was located in the heart of New York City. To make matters more expensive, her business required a large showroom. Moving her business to a lower priced area of NYC was completely out of the question. Faced with this reality, she began to explore new ways to maximize the dollars she was spending each month on rent. She had already moved most of her recurring payments to her credit cards in order to earn airline miles, but couldn’t find a way to pay some bills, like her rent, by card. Armed with an additional incentive, a welcome bonus for reaching the minimum spend requirement on a new credit card, she was determined to find a pay her remaining bills with a card. That’s when she found Melio.

Here’s how she calculated the ROI:

• Melio fees for $10,000/mo rent = $290
• Bonus Points: 80,000 points
• Tax Incentive: $290 fee was tax-deductible
• Recurring Reward Points: 3 Points for every $1 spent (30,000 points/month)
• ROI = No-brainer!

It’s great to hear about the many new ways business owners are using Melio to maximize the dollars they’re spending each month on their business expenses. Rent is commonly one of the biggest expenses that traditionally cannot be paid with a card. But rent is just the tip of the iceberg when if comes to missed opportunities to pay by credit card. There are many other recurring, big expenses that can now be used to earn cash back and rewards with Melio.