Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature Card Review

Full Review of Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature Card

Pros Explained

• Choose how to receive your rewards: The Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature card allows you to select the rewards structure that works best for your needs. The option to receive 1.5% cash back on every dollar spent is probably the best choice for many businesses, except perhaps for those with five-figure monthly card spending. You can also choose to earn one Wells Fargo point per dollar spent; each point is worth one cent apiece, which represents a 1% rewards rate. Spending $10,000 or more in a month earns a bonus of 5,000 points, which essentially allows you to match the cash-back rate. And redeeming rewards online provides a 10% points bonus, which would allow big spenders to slightly exceed the cash-back rewards rate.
• Helpful account-management tools: Cardholders gain access to Wells Fargo's Business Elite Online Reporting. This free service is a robust platform that helps you manage your business expenses. Among other functions, you can track and manage your spending, analyze spending by category, and create custom reports. You can also set up spending controls on each card, allowing only certain types of purchases on them or limiting spending to a certain threshold.

Cons Explained

• Annual fee applies after first year: There's no annual fee in your first year as a card member. After that, the fee increases to $125. While that fee isn’t especially high, some other business credit cards with similar rewards have no annual fee at all. 
• High spending required for the bonus: The Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature card does have a bonus for new card members, but it requires five or six times the spending of some other business cards with comparable bonuses. You’ll earn $1,000 or 100,000 bonus points when you spend $25,000 within the first three months of opening an account. For freelancers and most independent contractors and owners of new businesses, it will be far more difficult to hit that spending threshold than those for some competing cards.
• Wells Fargo customer service is below average: Most people don't interact with their credit card issuer very often. But when that’s necessary, it’s often a matter of some urgency and even stress, which means you want a satisfying experience. Unfortunately, that’s less likely to be the case with Wells Fargo, according to J.D. Power. In the 2022 U.S. Small Business Credit Card Satisfaction Study, J.D. Power ranked Wells Fargo sixth out of seven card issuers and gave the bank a below-average score.

Who This Card Is Best For

The Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature card is best suited for businesses that will charge a lot to the card since being able to collect on the card's hefty bonus requires spending $25,000 in the first three months after you open an account.

Also, if you spend big on the card but have a small or nonexistent accounting staff, you might especially benefit from Business Elite Online Reporting, the free service that comes with the card and provides tools to help track and manage card spending. This card's also a decent option for use on business travel. It has no foreign transaction fee, which is a huge plus for overseas trips, and it offers comprehensive travel benefits, including travel accident insurance, auto rental coverage, and lost luggage reimbursement. You’ll also get up to $100 as reimbursement for incidental travel fees each year.

Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature Card Bonus

New card members can get a $1,000 cash-back bonus or 100,000 bonus points after spending at least $25,000 on purchases within the first three months of opening an account. While $1,000 is a significant bonus, a number of other business cards offer competitive incentives and for smaller or equal spending totals than the $25,000 required by the Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature card to earn its bonus.

For example, the Chase Ink Business Preferred offers 100,000 bonus points after you spend $15,000 in the first three months, a bonus that’s worth $1,000 in cash back or $1,250 in travel booked through Chase Ultimate Rewards. And the CitiBusiness/AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard allows you to earn 65,000 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles if you spend at least $4,000 in your first four months with the card. Investopedia values that bonus at around $1,356 if used to book flights with American Airlines.

Rewards Earning Details

When you apply for the Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature card, you have the option of choosing to earn cash back rewards or rewards points. 

• Cash back option: Earn 1.5% cash back on every dollar spent.
• Rewards points option: Earn 1 point per dollar spent and receive 5,000 bonus points whenever your company spends $10,000 or more within a monthly billing period.

If you choose the points option, you can also earn bonus points (of between 1 and 10 points per dollar spent) by purchasing from 175 Wells Fargo partners. Those companies range from Ace Hardware and Office Depot to Danskin and the Gap through Best Western and Hertz. 

Rewards Redemption Details

If you opt for the cash back structure, your cash back is redeemable for statement credits or deposits to a Wells Fargo checking or savings account. But you must wait longer to receive those rewards than with some competing cards. Earned cash back is credited only quarterly (in March, June, September, and December), whereas that credit is made monthly for the Chase Ink Business cards, for example.

If you decide to use rewards points, you have a number of redemption options. You can purchase gift cards in common denominations such as $25, $50, $100, etc. For travel, you can redeem points to buy flights "at a reduced price," according to Wells Fargo, or use them directly to buy flights, starting at 25,000 points per domestic flight. (There's a $24 fee for every redemption for an airline ticket.)

When you redeem points online, you'll get a 10% point credit. For example, if you had 20,000 points and redeemed them online, you'd actually have 22,000 points to use. Because of the 10% bonus, opting for rewards points can give you more value than if you decided to use cash back rewards. 

How to Maximize Your Rewards

To get the most value from your card, use it for all of your business purchases. On all purchases, you'll earn 1.5% cash back or 1 point per dollar spent.

Opting for points makes the most sense if you plan to spend at least $10,000 a month on the card, since that qualifies you to earn 5,000 bonus points for each month. Larger businesses might have an easier time reaching this minimum monthly spend, and Wells Fargo allows up to 200 employee cards. You'll also want to plan to redeem your points online, since you'll get a 10% points bonus by doing so.

To put that in perspective, let's say your business spent $10,000 per month for three months, for a total of $30,000 spent. If you used the cash back option, you’d earn $450 in rewards. 

If you spent that same amount but went with rewards points, you'd earn 30,000 rewards points. Plus, you'd get 15,000 bonus points—5,000 for every month that you spent at least $10,000—giving you a total of 45,000 points (though it's important to note that the "return on spending would diminish down to the equivalent of 1 point per dollar on all monthly spend beyond $10,000"). Redeem those points online, and you’d get a 10% bonus—giving you 49,500 points. Your points are worth 1 cent each, so those points are worth $495, or $45 more value than if you opted for cash back rewards. 

You can earn additional points by patronizing Wells Fargo partners, which number 175. The rewards include 1 and as many as 4 or 5 points per dollar spent at a host of online apparel retailers, including Northface.com, Walmart.com, and HomeDepot.com. Buying $500 a year of stuff at these retailers would earn you points worth $5 to $25. 

Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature Card's Outstanding Benefits

This card offers some exceptional perks, including: 

• Travel incidental fee reimbursement: Each year, you'll get up to $100 in reimbursement for incidental travel costs, such as baggage fees.

Standard Benefits

• Travel accident insurance
• Travel cancellation/interruption with weather
• Trip-delay reimbursement
• Lost-luggage coverage
• Travel and emergency assistance services
• Secondary auto-rental insurance
• Visa extended warranty protection
• Visa purchase protection
• Free cards for employees

Cardholder Experience

If you’re looking for a new credit card, it's helpful to consider the issuer’s customer service. Unfortunately, Wells Fargo has a subpar reputation when it comes to customer support. 

In the 2022 U.S. Small Business Credit Card Satisfaction Study, J.D. Power ranked Wells Fargo sixth out of seven card issuers and gave the bank a below-average score.

Wells Fargo's customer service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can contact customer support through its online platform or by calling 1-800-231-5511. 

Security Features

The Wells Fargo Business Elite Signature card offers basic security features that are standard for business credit cards. You'll get perks like:

• Business credit card account alerts
• Fraud monitoring
• Zero liability protection

Final Verdict

While the Wells Fargo Elite Business Elite Signature card offers respectable rewards, especially in the form of cash back, the card has a number of drawbacks that put it at a disadvantage with many competitors. These include the fact that earning the card's bonus requires hefty spending of $15,000 in the first three months, Wells Fargo performs below average in satisfying its credit card customers, and the card charges $125 annually starting in the second year despite only offering rewards that you can readily receive with cards that charge no annual fee. For example, the no-fee Discover it Business card allows you to earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase you make.

A suite of expense-management tools does add value to this card for businesses who could use assistance with managing expenses charged to their company cards. The card also offers a broader selection of travel benefits than most business cards with relatively low fees. Those advantages, though, should be weighed carefully against the shortcomings of this card and its issuer before choosing it over other card options for small businesses.