cmi in the media

Credit card helps cover loans to small business

By MARCIA HEROUX POUNDS
Business Writer
Posted April 18 2001

American Express Co. on Tuesday launched a new card aimed at supporting programs that make small loans to businesses with fewer than five employees.

"We're targeting small business [owners] who want to give back to their communities," said Richard Tambor, senior vice president of American Express Small Business Lending.

One percent of spending on the Community Business credit card will go to microenterprise development organizations, Tambor said.

Three of those organizations, which announced alliances with American Express, are ACCION, which makes loans primarily to the Hispanic community; the Association for Enterprise Opportunity; and Count-Me-In for Women's Economic Independence. Credit-card holders can designate which organization should receive the contribution.

Only one Florida organization, in Pensacola, so far is slated to benefit from American Express' program. But any woman business owner across the nation can apply for a loan from Count-Me-In, said Nell Merlino, chief executive of Count-Me-In.

American Express and its partners said their goal is to create the largest single source of private funding in the history of microenterprise development.

Microenterprises are businesses with capital needs of less than $35,000 a year. Typically microenterprise development organizations work closely with clients, making larger loans as the business owners pay off smaller ones.

Of the 55,000 microenterprise clients each year, about 70 percent are women and about 60 percent are from a minority ethnic/racial group.

The Community Business card carries a 3.99 percent introductory rate for six months and then adjusts to the prime plus 5.99 percent. The card has no annual fee and a credit line of up to $50,000. The qualifications for the card are the same as for any American Express card, the company said. For more information, see the company's Web site at www.americanexpress.com/communitybusiness.

Deborah Rosado Shaw, the first Community Business credit card holder, grew up in Spanish Harlem and is now CEO of importer Umbrellas Plus in New Jersey. She said it took many people and lending institutions to make her business successful, "people who believed in me before I could believe in myself," she said.