U.S. Bancorp is the parent of U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest commercial bank in the country, and it spends with thousands of outside vendors every year. Technology, marketing, facilities, professional services, staffing, print. If your company sells any of that, U.S. Bank is a buyer worth pursuing. And it runs a real supplier development program aimed at small and diverse businesses, not a logo on a webpage.
The catch is that getting into the system is easy and getting a contract is not. Registration takes maybe 30 minutes. What happens after depends on whether a buyer inside the bank has a need that matches what you sell, and whether you've given them a reason to remember you. Here's how the front door actually works.
Start with the supplier portalU.S. Bank takes new vendor registrations through its supplier portal, branded STARS, at usbank.starssmp.com. You create an account and complete a registration that asks for a company overview, your capabilities, your experience, and your business status, including whether you're a small or diverse enterprise.
Set your expectations correctly here. Registering does not put you in a queue that someone works through. It loads your company into a database the bank's sourcing and category teams search when they have a need. As U.S. Bank puts it, they'll contact you if an opportunity fits your company's description. So registration is necessary but passive. It's the equivalent of getting your resume into the applicant tracking system. It does nothing on its own.
That means the quality of what you enter matters more than the fact that you entered it. Be specific about what you do, the industries you serve, the certifications you hold, and the size of work you can take on. Vague capability descriptions get skipped. A buyer searching for "managed print services in the Twin Cities" needs those words to surface your record.
What counts as a diverse supplierU.S. Bank's diverse supplier definition is the standard one across corporate supplier diversity: a business at least 51% owned, controlled, and managed by one or more individuals who are minorities, women, veterans, people with disabilities, or members of the LGBTQ+ community. Ownership alone isn't enough. You have to control day-to-day operations and the strategic decisions too.
The "controlled and managed" language trips up businesses that took on a passive majority owner for the certification without that person running anything. Certifiers check for it, and so do corporate buyers during validation.
Which certifications U.S. Bank acceptsFor corporate diversity tracking, U.S. Bank wants a third-party certification, not a self-attestation. On its diverse supplier certification guidance, the bank points to these certifying bodies:
- NMSDC (National Minority Supplier Development Council) for minority-owned businesses, MBE certification, including its regional affiliate councils
- WBENC (Women's Business Enterprise National Council) for women-owned businesses, WBE
- NGLCC (National LGBT Chamber of Commerce) for LGBTQ+-owned businesses, LGBTBE
- NaVOBA (National Veteran-Owned Business Association) for veteran and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses
- Disability:IN for disability-owned businesses, DOBE
- The USHCC, USPAACC, and U.S. Black Chamber for additional minority business certifications
- NWBOC (National Women Business Owners Corporation) for women-owned and minority certification
The bank also recognizes self-attested federal designations through SAM.gov, the small-business categories like WOSB, SDVOSB, and HUBZone that matter for government work. For a corporate relationship, a third-party certification carries more weight, because it tells a buyer your status was verified by an outside body rather than checked by you.
One more thing worth knowing. U.S. Bank runs a certification sponsorship program that helps cover the financial cost of getting certified and provides technical help through the process. If certification fees are the thing holding you back, that's a real lever. The contact for it is supplier.development@usbank.com.
A note on the moment. Since 2025, a lot of large companies have softened or rebranded the "diversity" language around these programs in response to political and legal pressure. The mechanics, certification-based supplier programs, Tier 2 reporting, small-business sourcing, have largely stayed in place even where the label shifted. Check U.S. Bank's current supplier pages for the exact wording before you build outreach around a specific program name, because names are the part most likely to have changed.
The two programs that matter after you registerRegistration gets you into the database. Two U.S. Bank programs are where the actual on-ramps live.
Supplier development. This is the bank's coaching and mentoring track for small and diverse businesses. It's built to sharpen how you present your products and services and to help you understand how the bank's procurement process works. If you get into a development relationship, you're talking to people who can tell you what the bank buys and how decisions get made. That's intelligence most vendors never get.
Tier 2. U.S. Bank works with a network of large prime (Tier 1) suppliers and requires many of them to report their subcontracting spend with diverse businesses. That subcontracting spend is Tier 2. For a smaller supplier, a Tier 2 path can be faster than a direct contract, because you're selling to the prime, who already holds the U.S. Bank relationship, while your work still counts toward the bank's diversity numbers. If a direct deal isn't there yet, ask which primes serve the bank in your category.
The bank also publishes free education through a Business Resources Central learning dashboard. Worth a look, but it's a resource, not a relationship.
What actually gets you a callbackThe vendors who break through treat U.S. Bank like a named account, not a portal submission. A few things separate them.
Lead with a problem you solve and a number attached to it. "We cut print spend 18% for two regional banks" beats "full-service print solutions." Buyers remember outcomes, not adjectives.
Get your certification finished before you pitch, or at least in process. A diverse certification is a filter many corporate buyers run first. Without it, you may not surface in the searches that matter, and the sponsorship program exists specifically to remove the cost excuse.
Use the email addresses. supplier.development@usbank.com for the development and sponsorship programs, supplier.diversity@usbank.com for the diversity team. A short, specific message that names your category and your certification status beats a cold portal entry that nobody opened.
Build your public profile so that when a buyer searches your name, you read as a serious vendor. A clear supplier profile with your certifications, NAICS codes, and capability statement does work while you sleep.
U.S. Bank is one account, not the strategyLanding U.S. Bank as a customer is a strong goal. Building your whole pipeline around one bank is not. The companies that win consistently in corporate supplier diversity register with 10, 20, 40 corporations, because each one buys on its own cycle and you can't predict which need lands first.
Our corporate program directory lists supplier diversity programs across the Fortune 500 and major financial institutions, with the certifications each one accepts and how to register, so you can run the same play at U.S. Bank, its peers, and the corporate buyers most likely to need what you sell. If you want the full picture of how these programs evaluate and onboard suppliers, start with our guide on getting into corporate supplier diversity programs.
And if you're not certified yet, that's the gate to clear first. CertifyAll handles the filing across the certifications corporate buyers like U.S. Bank actually accept, so you capture your business details once instead of restarting the paperwork for each body.
Register on STARS. Get certified. Then go make a buyer remember your name.
