BMO Business Platinum - Bank of the West

BMO Business Platinum is issued by Bank of the West. The issuer publishes a purchase APR of 18.74%–27.74% and an annual fee of $1.

What you are looking at

A business card. Consumer protections under the CARD Act generally do not apply to business accounts, and most issuers require a personal guarantee from the owner.

What borrowing on it costs

What 27.74% actually costs: about $277 a year on a $1,000 balance, or roughly $23 each month. That is simple interest on a flat balance, so read it as a scale rather than a bill — real interest compounds daily and moves with what you owe.

The introductory offer

There is a 0% introductory rate on purchases for 9 months. An intro rate is a real saving and a deadline at the same time: the balance does not clear itself when the period ends, and whatever is left begins accruing at the ongoing rate.

Fees worth knowing

The annual fee is $1, which it earns back only if what the card gives you is worth more than that every year.

The gaps

Bank of the West does not publish the foreign transaction fee and the late payment fee on the page where this card appears. We have not filled those gaps with typical figures, because a plausible number is indistinguishable from a real one once it is printed beside a card.

The rates and fees for any card are disclosed in full before you submit an application, and the issuer has to give them to you then. If you want them beforehand, the issuer's cardholder agreements filed with the CFPB are linked on this page.

In short

The published rate of 18.74%–27.74% is the figure to weigh, and it only applies if you carry a balance. Clear the statement in full each month and the rate is irrelevant to what the card costs you.

The card name, the image and the application link on this page were read from Bank of the West's own website (product page). The rates and fees, where we show them, come from a different source entirely: the cardholder agreement the issuer filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Those two sources can disagree, and when they do the issuer's current offer is the one you would actually get. A filed agreement is a snapshot of the terms at the moment of filing; it is the best public record of what a card costs and it is not a quote. Read Bank of the West's current disclosure before you apply.

We join a filing to a product only when the names match on every meaningful word. Issuers file documents, not cards, so a great many filings cannot be tied to any one product — and an agreement attached to the wrong card would misstate the price of borrowing money. Those unmatched documents no longer get pages of their own on this site: a page named after a PDF is not something a reader can use. They remain published as documents, linked from this page and from the issuer's. How we read the filings.