[Update] U.S. Bank Business Cards Have Confusing ‘Central Billing Account’ (Bank of America, Wells Fargo)

(Update 8/18/24: multiple readers warn (1, 2, 3) that if you contact U.S. Bank about removing Central Billing it messes up your existing rewards and pending signup bonuses. And so I’d personally just leave the Central and use it as my main account, as discussed in the post below.)

(Update: readers note that Bank of America does a similar thing on their business cards which they call CORP account. And Wells Fargo also has something similar.)

A lot of us who signed up for a U.S. Bank business card gets confused about this so I thought it worth a post:

When you sign up for U.S. Bank business cards, the bank opens up two unique accounts for your card. One looks like a regular card account and the other is something called a “Central Bill Account.” That Central account has a separate account number, and feeds from the regular card account; any purchase made on the card account shows up as money owed on both accounts.

I believe the idea might be that the card account details are informational – something for the employee; you won’t ever see the bank say that the card owes anything since really it’s the business who owes the money, not the employee. On the other hand, the Central Bill Account is the business account which actually owes the money.

You’ll even see differing balances on the two accounts since any amount that was billed to you gets removed from the employee card side of things. (The card account only shows the new charges, even when the old charges have not yet been paid off, whereas the Central account shows the full balance, as any other bank would do it.)

The card account will show $0 minimum payment due, even when you have a minimum payment owed. You’ll even get a statement saying that you don’t owe any minimum payment, and if you don’t make the payment you’ll get hit with a late fee since you really do owe a minimum payment. Again, I believe the idea is that ‘you’ as the employee don’t owe anything since the business owes it, and that’s billed to the Central Billing Account of the business.

My advice: Just ignore the main card account and only use the Central Billing Account for everything, including statements. When you eventually close out the card, be sure to have the Central Billing Account closed out as well.

There’s another option to call in and have them remove the Central Billing Account, and then your card should operate normally. Multiple readers warn (1, 2, 3) that if you contact U.S. Bank about removing Central Billing it messes up your existing rewards and pending signup bonuses. And so I’d personally just leave the Central and use it as my main account.

For some reason I got this Central Billing Account only on my Triple Cash business card, not on my Leverage business which I signed up a few months earlier. Reader Shawn tells us that there’s actually an option to select during card signup whether to have this Central Billing feature or not.

When you have multiple U.S. Bank business cards it’s possible to set them up that they all feed into the same Central Billing Account for simpler bill management. For our readership, I’d suggest that most of us will prefer declining the Central Billing option. I must have mistakenly signed up for it when applying for the Triple Cash, but not when applying for the Leverage card (or maybe it wasn’t yet an option then).

In the image below, the top account is my Leverage card which works normally. The bottom two accounts are both the same Triple Cash card with two separate entries in the online login (and, confusingly, differing balances). Again, I just ignore the regular card and use only the Central Billing Account.

Hat tip to reader Gerald and beenthere for reminding me about this.