Card Issuers that Issue Unique Card Numbers for Authorized Users

All personal and business credit cards have the ability to add secondary cardholders to the same account. For personal cards, we call it “Authorized User” cards, or AU for short, and for business cards it’s known as “Employee” cards.

[Read: How Does Being An Authorized User Affect Your Credit?]

Sometimes the secondary card will have the same card number and CVV as the primary card while other times each card gets a unique number. In this post, we’ll go through card issuers to see how each one works in this regard.

Amex

All secondary Amex cards, personal and business, come with a unique card number.

This is well-known, and many people use this as an easy way to rack up multiple Amex Offer deals by enrolling multiple cards in each offer. Since each card has a unique card number, every extra secondary card is another eligible card for Amex Offers purposes.

It’s also visible online and on the monthly statements which transactions were made with which AU/employee card.

Apple Card

Apple card comes with a unique number for the authorized user.

Bank of America

Personal AU cards come with the same card number and CVV as the primary.

Business employee cards come with unique numbers.

Barclay’s

Both personal and business secondary cards come with a unique card number. Barclay’s also shows the AU transactions separately on the monthly statement, though not in the online login.

BBVA

BVVA AU cards have the same number as the primary card.

Capital One

Both personal and business secondary cards come with a unique number. It’s also visible online and on the monthly statements which transactions were made with the secondary card.

Chase

Personal: Comes with the same number as the primary card.

Business: Comes with a unique number.

Citi

Personal AU cards have the same number as the primary card.

The exception to this is the Citi Costco card which gives a unique number for AU cards. This seems to vary, however, since others get the same number on AU card as on the primary card for Costco too.

All business employee cards come with a unique card number.

City National Bank

Each CNB AU card come with a unique card number.

Comenity

Comenity AU cards have the same number as the primary card.

Discover

Discover AU cards have the same number as the primary card. (Note that they do show the AU spend separately on the statement.)

Business employee cards – please let us know.

Elan

Elan AU cards have the same number and CVV as the primary card.

FNBO

FNBO AU cards have the same number and CVV as the primary card.

Synchrony

Synchrony AU cards have the same number as the primary card.

TD

TD AU cards come with a unique card number.

US Bank

U.S. Bank AU cards have the same number as the primary card. This is true on both Visa and Amex versions.

Business employee cards come with a unique card number.

USAA

USAA AU cards come with a unique card number.

Wells Fargo

Personal AU cards have the same number and CVV as the primary card.

Business: Please let us know.

Summary

To summarize, all small business cards seem to have a unique card number for employee cards while personal cards sometimes come with a different AU card number and sometimes the same.

Thanks to numerous friends who helped out with the info in this post, especially E* from Demflyers for lots of data points