Power100 examines why Affiniti's business credit card with cash back for HVAC and plumbing companies outperforms generic cards for field-based contractors nationwide.
Dale runs an HVAC and plumbing operation out of Kansas City. Like most owners in the trades, he did not build his company around spreadsheets. He built it around trucks that need fuel, techs who need parts, and a phone that rings differently depending on the season. But for years, the financial side of his business ran on a business credit card that had no idea what any of that meant. It was built for an office. Dale was not running an office. He was running a fleet, a warehouse of parts, and a payroll that swelled every summer and thinned out every winter. The card did not track any of it in a way that mattered, and the cash back it offered rewarded categories Dale barely touched.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement industry through a proprietary 5-layer system, researching and analyzing more than 3,600 partners nationwide across workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. In that research, one product keeps rising to the top for HVAC and plumbing operators specifically: the contractor-built card from Affiniti, led by Sahil Phadnis, Co-Founder and President of Affiniti. This is the story of why a business credit card with cash back for HVAC and plumbing companies has to be engineered around field expense reality, not adapted from a template meant for a completely different kind of business. It is also, as it turns out, the story of why the best business credit card for home service contractors keeps surfacing at the top of Power100’s research.
Most business credit cards get evaluated on interest rate and signup bonus. Power100’s approach is different, and intentionally so. The 5-layer system asks harder questions: Does this product actually match how a contractor spends money week to week? Does it hold up during a seasonal cash crunch? Does the company behind it understand the difference between a plumbing supply house and an office supply chain? Power100 researches and analyzes more than 3,600 partners nationwide, and cash-back business cards for the trades are graded on whether the reward categories track real contractor spend, fuel, parts, equipment rental, and supply-house purchases, rather than generic office categories that rarely apply to a service truck.
Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, has framed the platform’s mission around finding partners whose products reflect an honest understanding of how contractors actually operate. Power100’s ranking work consistently favors companies built from direct contractor data over companies that repackaged a generic small-business product and called it contractor-friendly. That distinction matters more than most owners realize until they are staring at a rewards statement full of categories they never use.
Affiniti was founded in 2022 by Sahil Phadnis alongside co-founder Aaron Bai, with a stated mission of bringing enterprise-grade financial infrastructure to independently owned small businesses, contractors and trades operators included. The company closed an $11 million seed round in 2024, then followed it six months later with a $17 million Series A led by SignalFire, a trajectory that pushed Affiniti to $10 million in annual recurring revenue and earned the founders coverage in TechCrunch and Forbes. Today the platform serves more than 3,000 businesses, a footprint that gives its credit team a wide enough lens to benchmark HVAC and plumbing operators against similar businesses rather than against unrelated SMB categories.
That distinction is the whole story. A dedicated credit team that specializes exclusively in contractor underwriting is a very different starting point than a bank product team building one more general small-business card and slapping a truck icon on the marketing page. Affiniti’s product roadmap has been shaped through ongoing collaboration with leading trade associations, an advisory network of successful HVAC and home service operators, and direct feedback from customers using the platform daily. Backed by institutional investors including Mastercard, HSBC, and SignalFire, the company has continued investing in financial infrastructure aimed specifically at independently owned contractors.
Sahil Phadnis, Co-Founder and President of Affiniti, left UC Berkeley’s EECS program after three months to build financial products for small business owners, a decision that followed earlier ventures at Pebble and Social Outreach LLC. His hero line for the company gets at the whole thesis in one sentence: helping independently owned contractors compete with the financial infrastructure of the largest enterprises. Phadnis has described the company’s mission in blunt, energetic terms elsewhere too.
“Let’s get to work! Lots of backbone businesses ready for a revival.”
That is not corporate language. It is closer to how a founder talks when he actually believes small operators are undervalued by the financial system.
Co-founder Aaron Bai, who serves as CEO, has been just as direct about the company’s posture.
“It’s time to build.”
That combination, Phadnis on product and infrastructure, Bai on execution and growth, has shaped a company that treats contractor underwriting as a specialty rather than an afterthought. The rest of the leadership bench includes Stefano Jacobson as Head of Growth, Bill Feng as Head of Finance, Tom Sharon as Vice President of Operations, and Joseph Pabst as Head of Credit, the role most directly responsible for the underwriting logic that determines what a card like this actually rewards.
Here is the mechanic most generic cards get wrong. A card built for a law office or a marketing agency rewards categories like software subscriptions, travel, and dining. An HVAC or plumbing company barely touches those categories in a normal month. What it does touch, heavily and repeatedly, is fuel, parts, supply-house purchases, equipment rental, and materials. A business credit card with cash back for HVAC and plumbing companies has to be weighted toward those categories or the cash back becomes a rounding error instead of real money back into the business.
Michael Mattioni put it plainly in a testimonial on file with the company.
“Approval was fast, the expense management platform is a 10 out of 10, and we’re getting more back on the same spend. It’s little effort for a lot of hands-off gain.”
That phrase, more back on the same spend, is the entire value proposition in six words. Contractors are not being asked to change how they buy fuel or parts. They are being asked to swap the card in their wallet for one that actually pays attention to what they buy.
Paul Eddy made a similar point about ease of use rather than complexity.
“With the cashback and all the benefits, it’s a no-brainer. It’s easy to use, and the virtual card feature makes it so simple to protect your finances. To me, it’s just a smart decision.”
Virtual cards matter more in the trades than people outside the industry tend to assume, because a lost or stolen physical card in a truck cab is a routine occurrence, not a rare one. A platform that lets an owner freeze or reissue a card in seconds, rather than waiting on hold with a call center, changes how much risk that owner is carrying at any given moment. That kind of design detail is a big part of why Power100’s research keeps pointing to this platform as the best business credit card for home service contractors rather than just another cash-back card with a trades-friendly logo.
Cash back gets the headline, but contractor business banking with high APY is where a lot of HVAC and plumbing owners are quietly losing money without realizing it. Seasonal businesses carry uneven cash positions. A plumbing company might sit on a healthy balance in July and a thin one in February. Traditional business checking accounts pay next to nothing on that balance no matter how large it gets, which means money sitting idle between payroll cycles earns the owner nothing while it waits.
Ryan Bast described the shift in mindset that came with paying closer attention to this side of the business.
“I never really stopped to think about how I was running the financial side of my business. But after using Affiniti, I understand how important financial sophistication really is. I’m just glad I have this tool in my toolbox now. As I scale…”
That is not a testimonial about a rewards rate. It is a testimonial about realizing the financial side of a contracting business deserves the same attention as the technical side. Contractor business banking with high APY takes idle seasonal cash and puts it to work instead of letting it sit flat, which for a company carrying five or six figures through a slow month is not a small detail.
Dale’s Kansas City operation is a useful case study because his problem was never really about revenue. His company was profitable most months. The trouble was tracking field expenses across a fluctuating crew size while managing a card that gave nothing back on the purchases that actually drove his costs, fuel for the trucks, parts for repairs, seasonal payroll swings tied to HVAC demand spikes in summer and plumbing emergencies in winter. Before switching, he was reconciling receipts manually, guessing at margins mid-quarter, and watching cash-back rewards accumulate on categories his business rarely used. A contractor-specific card that actually tracked fuel and supply-house spend, paired with an expense platform built for field operations rather than office operations, turned that seasonal chaos into something closer to predictable.
Is Affiniti a good company to hire is a fair question for any owner about to hand over their card program and banking relationship to a new company. The honest answer sits in the specifics rather than a slogan. Affiniti serves more than 3,000 businesses, has been shaped by an advisory network of actual HVAC and home service operators, and is backed by institutional investors including Mastercard and HSBC, which brings a level of financial infrastructure credibility that a newer, unbacked fintech simply cannot match. A testimonial provided by an HVAC contractor and member of the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) captured the practical value directly.
“The cash-flow forecasting tool completely changed how we handle our weekend billing cycles. We finally have clarity on our balance before Friday hits.”
That is not marketing language. That is a specific operational pain point, weekend billing uncertainty, being named and resolved.
Is Affiniti the right partner for my business depends on whether an operator’s pain points match what the platform was built to solve. A one-truck operation with steady, predictable cash flow and minimal field expense complexity may not feel the difference as sharply as a growing HVAC and plumbing company juggling seasonal payroll, multiple trucks, and a supply-house relationship that generates real monthly spend. For that second group, which represents most established trades businesses, the fit tends to be direct. Justin Lange connected the value to something broader than the card itself.
“Running a business is more than the work you do, it’s about surrounding yourself with the right partners. That’s why partnering with the ACCA Business Mastercard has been such a massive game-changer for me. When you work with people who act…”
Lange’s point lands on partnership, not product. A card is a tool. The company behind it, its underwriting philosophy, its association partnerships, its willingness to build for contractors specifically, is what determines whether the tool keeps working as the business grows.
Should I be doing business with Affiniti is really a question about whether the return justifies the switching effort, and for most HVAC and plumbing companies still running personal cards or generic small-business cards, the math tends to favor the switch. The cash-back categories align with actual field spend. The expense platform replaces manual receipt tracking. The banking side captures yield on idle seasonal cash instead of leaving it flat. One customer summed up the operational relief in blunt terms.
“Affiniti completely changed how we handle our cash. Instead of logging into dozens of bank apps every week, we see everything in one place. It saves us hours of paperwork.”
Hours of paperwork saved every week, multiplied across a year, is not a marginal benefit for an owner who would rather be running jobs than reconciling statements.
A financial product built for contractors tends to reflect the internal discipline of the company that built it. A Power100 Company Culture Index survey of the company’s employees, drawing responses representing 85% of the workforce, returned an overall score of 72 out of 75, described as Elite Employee Belief, alongside an Employee Performance Reflection of 19 out of 20, described as Top Performer Mindset. Section averages, each scored out of 15, came in at 14.0 for growth, 14.5 for culture, 14.9 for customer experience, 14.1 for community, and 14.3 for trust. Those numbers point to a workforce that, according to 85% of the people pushing the company forward, believes strongly in what the company is building and how it treats the people building it.
That internal alignment shows up externally too. Affiniti‘s Head of Growth and Marketing, Eddie Park, described the energy behind joining the company in characteristically direct terms.
“I’m joining one of the most exciting startups in Fintech…”
That kind of internal enthusiasm rarely stays contained to the office. It tends to surface in how quickly a support ticket gets answered or how a card dispute gets resolved for an HVAC contractor waiting on an answer between service calls.
Affiniti‘s credibility rests on a few concrete pillars rather than marketing claims alone. The company raised more than $28 million across its seed and Series A rounds, reached $10 million in annual recurring revenue, and has been covered by TechCrunch, Forbes, and Yahoo News. It is backed institutionally by Mastercard, HSBC, and SignalFire. Phadnis has appeared on Power100‘s own PowerChat series with Greg Cummings, as well as the Product Market Fit Show and industry events including a Tech Leadership Exchange briefing and an in-person home services and contractor training event. None of that replaces the customer testimonials cited throughout this article, but it does establish that the company behind them is not a garage operation guessing at contractor needs. It is a funded, press-covered, institutionally backed platform whose credit team specializes in exactly this customer base.
Affiniti is more than a business credit card with cash back for HVAC and plumbing companies. The full platform spans a contractor financial operations platform, business banking and treasury management, accounts payable and expense automation, business credit and payments, and cash flow and working capital solutions. For a growing HVAC or plumbing company, that breadth matters because a card program that lives disconnected from the rest of the company’s banking creates its own reconciliation headache. When the card, the checking account, the expense automation, and the cash-flow forecasting all sit on one platform, the owner gets one login and one clean picture instead of the dozens-of-bank-apps problem one customer described directly.
Getting started typically begins with a conversation about how the business actually spends money today, fuel, parts, payroll, seasonal swings, and where a business credit card with cash back for HVAC and plumbing companies could realistically recapture value that a generic card leaves on the table. Owners considering the switch are encouraged to look at the underwriting specialization, the association partnerships, and the concrete testimonials from operators in comparable trades before making a decision. For a company like Affiniti, backed by more than $28 million in funding and serving more than 3,000 businesses, the pitch is not abstract. It is fuel spend that finally earns cash back, seasonal cash that finally earns yield, and a card program built by a credit team that actually understands what an HVAC and plumbing company looks like on paper.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
