Guides / Funding / 8 min read / Updated 1 August 2026

How business credit works for a US company

This is a description of the mechanics, not an offer and not advice. Read it as a map of what has to exist and in what sequence, because applying out of order produces denials that stay on the file.

What the term actually refers to

Business credit is a file about your company, held separately from your personal credit file, at bureaus that specialise in commercial data — principally Dun & Bradstreet, Experian Business and Equifax Business. Dun & Bradstreet's identifier for a business is the D-U-N-S number, which is free to obtain.

The file does not exist because you incorporated. It exists once somebody reports something to it. A company can trade for years, pay everybody on time, and have no business credit file at all, because none of its suppliers report.

That is the first thing worth internalising: this is a record that is built on purpose, not a byproduct of operating.

The foundation, in the order it has to exist

1. A registered entity. A corporation or LLC, in good standing, in a state where it is properly registered.
2. An EIN. The federal tax identification number for the business, obtained from the IRS directly and at no cost.
3. A business address and phone number that are consistent everywhere and belong to the business. Underwriting systems check these against each other, and a mismatch between what you filed and what you applied with is a common quiet reason for a decline.
4. A business bank account in the exact legal name, funded and used. This is where most applications look for evidence that the company is real and operating.
5. Consistency. The legal name, address and phone identical across the state filing, the IRS, the bank, the bureaus and every application. Small differences — "St" versus "Street", a suite number missing — cause more trouble than they should.

How a file gets built once the foundation exists

Two things build a commercial file: accounts that report, and time paying them.

Some suppliers and vendors report payment behaviour to the commercial bureaus and some do not, and this is not usually advertised. Accounts that do report are the ones that put history on the file. Accounts that do not are still useful to the business and simply invisible to the bureaus.

Paying early matters more here than in consumer credit. Dun & Bradstreet's payment score is built around paying on or before terms, and paying on the due date is not the top of the scale.

Then it is time. There is no way to compress a payment history, and any offer that claims to is either selling you shortcuts that fail underwriting or selling you nothing at all.

Where the personal guarantee comes in

Most credit extended to a young company is personally guaranteed, whatever the marketing around it says. The company has no history, so the underwriter is lending against the owner.

This matters for two reasons. Applications with a personal guarantee usually involve a check of your personal credit, and a lot of them in a short window is visible and unhelpful. And a guarantee means the debt is yours if the company cannot pay it — a fact that gets glossed over in every pitch about "credit that does not touch your personal profile".

Building a genuine commercial file over time is what eventually reduces the need for guarantees. It does not remove it on day one, and nobody can arrange for it to.

Why the order matters more than the effort

Applications leave a record. Applying before the foundation is complete produces declines, and a pattern of recent declines makes the next application harder — so a rushed start costs months rather than saving them.

The sequence that works is boring: get the entity and the EIN right, open the bank account, get the details consistent everywhere, establish reporting accounts, pay them early for long enough to have a history, and only then apply for the things you actually wanted at the start.

What nobody can tell you in advance

Amounts. Not a limit, not a total, not a timeline to a number.

Approval decisions belong to the issuer, against their own criteria, their own risk appetite that month, and information about you they will not share. Anyone who quotes a figure before an application has been submitted is quoting a marketing number, and the figures that circulate in this market are somebody's best individual outcome presented as a norm.

That is the reason there is no amount anywhere on this site, including on the listing this guide sits next to. A number would be the easiest thing in the world to print and the least honest.

If you are not a US resident

A non-resident can form a US entity and obtain an EIN without a Social Security number — the IRS has a process for exactly this, and it takes longer than the online route available to those who have one.

Where it gets harder is banking, because most institutions want identity verification they are set up to perform on residents. And an individual who has US tax filing obligations but is not eligible for a Social Security number may need an ITIN, which is a tax identification number and not a work permit, an immigration status, or by itself a route to credit.

Everything above about foundation and sequence still applies, with longer timelines at the banking step.