Google is now dangling an interesting carrot in front of select U.S. AdWords users: a new low-interest credit card with no annual fee. The only catch is you can’t use it to buy office supplies or airline tickets but only Google advertising. According to Alexei Oreskovic reporting for Reuters, the AdWords Business credit card is Google’s first inroad into vendor financing.

Google said the credit card, which will initially be available only to select users, was designed to help SMBs that advertise on Google but don’t have the funds to support a heavy ad campaign.

Oreskovic points out that Google makes 96 percent of its revenue from advertising, with the vast majority coming from the small ads that appear alongside its search results, known as AdWords. “But its business faces rising competition from a search alliance between Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc, as well as from social networking service Facebook, which is becoming popular with small and large advertisers alike,” Oreskovic writes.

Read more at Reuters ^[1].