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Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card vs Spark Cash Select 2026
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There are a lot of business credit cards out there. Speaking from experience, some credit cards are more difficult to keep track of than others for your business.
If you’re trying to not spend too much time thinking about what card to use on your day-to-day spend and want to avoid an annual fee, there are generally two standout options: Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card and the Capital One Spark Cash Select.
Both the Ink Unlimited and Spark Cash Select have two very important (similar) characteristics:
Both credit cards are great for small business owners because of their simplicity. However, the natural question arises: how do they compare and is there a definitive winner between the two?
| Feature | Ink Business Unlimited | Spark Cash Select |
|---|---|---|
| Annual fee | $0 | $0 |
| Welcome bonus | $1,000 cash back after $8,000 spend in 4 months | $750 cash bonus after $6,000 spend in 3 months |
| Base earning rate | 1.5% cash back on all purchases | 1.5% cash back on all purchases |
| Travel bonus | None | 5% on hotels and rental cars via Capital One Travel |
| 0% intro APR | Yes, 12 months on purchases | No |
| Counts against 5/24? | No | Yes |
| Points ecosystem | Chase Ultimate Rewards (Hyatt, United, Southwest, Aeroplan) | Capital One Miles (Aeroplan, Cathay Pacific, others) |
This was one of my first business credit cards and for good reason: it’s a no-annual-fee credit card with an easy-to-use earning structure and bonus:
This is such a great business card because it’s a pretty no-brainer to have. With a 0% introductory APR, you can save a lot on interest payments.
Btw: that $1,000 in cash back is absolutely ridiculous considering this is a no-annual-fee card.
Of note, the 1.5% cash back is earned on every single purchase. So you can use it at office stores, Costco, In-N-Out, etc. and get rewards for all your spend. That’s not to say that this is the best return you can get, but it’s certainly the simplest.
One of the important things about the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is that opening it does not count against your 5/24. Business cards like the Unlimited only show up on your personal credit report if you are extremely delinquent on payments.
You can think of the Capital One Spark Cash Select as Capital One’s equivalent of the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card. In essence, it has very similar core features:
One downside worth knowing: the Spark Cash Select reports to personal credit bureaus, meaning opening it will count against your 5/24 count.
A powerful feature of both cards is the ability to turn their cash back earnings into points/miles.
For example, with the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card, the cash back you earn is accumulated as Chase Ultimate Rewards® points. Every $1 in cash back is equal to 100 points. And with the right credit card pairings, you can transfer those points to Chase’s awesome transfer partners.
I have the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card alongside a Chase Sapphire Reserve®. This combination allows me to convert the cashback I earn on this card into Chase points, which then means I can transfer them to valuable transfer partners. Here are some of my favorite Chase transfer partners:
If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve®, or Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, you can turn your cashback into transferable points to score some high value redemptions.
To turn the cash back you’ve earned into miles, you need to simultaneously hold one of the following cards:
With either one of these cards in hand, you can now convert your cash back to miles by logging into your Capital One Travel account and going to the "View Rewards" section near your card name in the top left corner of the card account screen.
You can then go to the Move Rewards section and shift your cash back around.
It usually makes far more sense to convert your cash back into miles because you can do a lot more with miles. Unfortunately, Capital One miles can be a bit harder to use for the uninitiated: the big downside is that Capital One doesn’t have any major US airline transfer partners, so a lot of the high value redemptions have to be scored via partner airlines.
Here are my favorite Capital One transfer partners:
While Capital One doesn’t have the strongest domestic transfer partners, there’s still quite a bit you can do with your miles.
I think the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is definitively the better card.
If we remove the 1.5% cash back on all purchases out of the equation (both cards have this), the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card shines immediately for two big reasons: (1) the 0% intro APR period; and (2) stronger travel insurance.
A 0% introductory APR for 12 months means you can carry a balance without paying it off immediately and park that cash in a high-yield savings account instead. For example, with a $5,000 credit limit and a 4% HYSA, maxing out your limit for the full 12 months earns you $200 in essentially free interest. Not bad for a no-annual-fee card.
Some people point to the Capital One Spark Cash Select's 5% back on travel booked via Capital One Travel as a reason to consider it. The problem: the Select has weak travel insurance, so I'd rather put travel spend on a card built for it. Booking through travel portals also comes with its own headaches.
If we get further into the weeds, one of the biggest things that stands out to me is that the Chase program is much more "beginner friendly." Why? They have access to:
With these three programs, you can generally lock in 1.2 to 1.5 cents per point pretty easily, meaning your Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is in theory earning around 2% or higher cashback on your day-to-day spend.
However, Capital One’s program is nowhere near as easy-to-use because of the lack of domestic transfer partners. For someone like me, I view both programs as somewhat equal since I feel very comfortable with more complex partner redemptions. But, Chase’s Hyatt partnership is incredibly powerful and needs to be considered here.
So, the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card wins pretty strongly against the Capital One Spark Cash Select and is part of the reason why I have the Unlimited in my wallet. Also, the Capital One Spark Cash Select counts as a slot for the 5/24 rule, which is a pretty notable downside for a business card.
The math is pretty clear and simple on why the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card wins out here: it just provides a lot more value up front than the Capital One Spark Cash Select and has a longer tail of value with its more beginner friendly Chase transfer program.
If you value simplicity in your business spend and want a high value card that can give you access to one of the best transferable points programs out there, then the Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card is most certainly the right card for you.
Again, that cash back you earn can eventually be converted into true transferable points with the right partner card. In my eyes, I view that $1,000 in cash back as basically 100,000 points, which are worth a lot to me. For Hyatt, you can easily get more than $1,000+ in value from simple hotel redemptions.
The Unlimited feels like a no-brainer, especially compared to some of the other $0 annual fee business cards in the market offering a flat cash back earn rate.
No. The Ink Business Unlimited is a business card and does not appear on your personal credit report under normal circumstances, so it does not count against Chase's 5/24 rule. This is a real advantage over the Spark Cash Select, which does report to personal credit bureaus.
Yes, but you need a premium Chase card to do it. If you also hold a Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, or Ink Business Preferred, your cashback automatically becomes Chase Ultimate Rewards points that you can transfer to partners like Hyatt, United, and Aeroplan.
The Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card offers $1,000 cash back after $8,000 in purchases in the first 4 months. The Spark Cash Select offers a $750 cash bonus after $6,000 in purchases in the first 3 months. Both are solid offers for no-annual-fee cards, but the Ink Unlimited's bonus is larger in absolute terms.
It can be, but it's a harder call compared to the Ink Business Unlimited. The Spark Cash Select reports to personal credit bureaus (counting against your 5/24 score), has a smaller welcome bonus, and lacks a 0% intro APR. The only edge it has is 5% back on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, which is a niche benefit unless you book travel that way regularly.
Chase wins for most people. With Chase, you get access to Hyatt, United, Southwest, and Aeroplan, all of which are beginner-friendly programs with strong domestic redemptions. Capital One's transfer partners are strong internationally (Aeroplan, Cathay Pacific), but lack a major US airline partner, making them harder to use for everyday domestic travel.
