What Is a P-Card? Understand How Purchase Cards Work and the Advantages for Companies

Corporate purchasing cards, or P-cards, have revolutionized how businesses manage expenses, offering a streamlined alternative to traditional accounts payable processes. From coffee runs to hotel bookings, P-cards empower employees to make business-related purchases with ease — all within the bounds of company policy.

The global corporate purchasing cards market is thriving. According to SpendEdge, it was projected to grow by $232 billion at a CAGR of 8.92% between 2020 and 2024. Similarly, ELINT Market Research reports the corporate cards market was valued at $40 billion in 2022 and forecasts a 7.3% growth rate by 2026.

With numbers like these, it’s clear P-cards are not just a convenience — they’re an essential tool for modern businesses.

What Is a P-Card?

A P-card, short for “Purchasing Card” or “Procurement Card,” is a type of corporate payment card organizations use to streamline the procurement process and facilitate business-related purchases.

P-cards are typically issued to employees with authorized purchasing power, enabling them to purchase directly from vendors without needing traditional buying orders or reimbursement processes. These cards offer a convenient and efficient way to manage small and routine purchases, track expenses, improve cash flow management, and enhance overall financial control for businesses.

P-cards often have predefined spending limits and detailed transaction reporting, making them valuable tools for organizations seeking to simplify purchasing procedures and reduce administrative burdens.

How Are P-Cards Different From Corporate Credit Cards?

On the surface, corporate credit cards seem like an ideal solution for companies. Employees will be familiar with the cards' functionality since they mirror a personal credit card. Like P-cards, corporate credit cards enable employees to access corporate funds. However, the way companies keep track of cardholder spending how spend is limited, and the distribution of control varies.

What Are the Advantages of P-Cards?

With the right P-card, finance, and accounting leaders can eliminate out-of-pocket expenses for employees throughout the entire payment process. Here are just a few of the recurring benefits companies experience when using P-cards:

• Customizable policies. P-cards allow for more significant control over company spend. Employers can set spending limits per card or vendor, enabling admins to create lists of pre-approved vendors. Having set per diems means that every employee knows how much they can spend, and accounting teams can customize these controls to match their general ledger codes.
• Minimizing reimbursements. Because of the customizable policies, P-card users automatically understand their purchasing power. Instead of employees having to pull out their personal credit or debit card, P-cards can minimize reimbursements because employees no longer need to pay for company expenses with personal funds.
• Decreased costs. Some companies can expect cost savings of up to 80% when implementing P-card programs by reducing the time to complete a purchase from requisition to payment.
• Enhanced security features. Purchasing card technology tends to outshine traditional payment methods, as it typically employs the latest security features to reduce fraud. Because of high payment usage rates, P-card payments deploy technologies like fingerprint authentication, chip-and-PIN technology, S-HTTP, and secure socket layers.

Where Corporate Credit Cards Fall Behind P-Cards

Here are a few examples of where P-cards outshine when it comes to payments and expense management:

• Unlike P-cards, corporate credit cards don’t employ adequate spending controls, and attached to these credit cards is often antiquated software.
• With many corporate card programs, reconciliation can be a tedious process. Expense reports, paper receipts, and supporting documents create clutter and waste time for finance teams.
• Corporate credit cards are also more susceptible to fraud. Simply asking an employee to hold on to the physical card is not enough. Consistent online purchases lead to credit card information scattered across the internet.

Are P-Cards Right For My Company?

Just like every company is unique, so is every corporate card solution. When looking for a way to make internal processes easier for financial teams, consider these obstacles that P-cards can help companies overcome:

• Lack of control over employee spending
• Time wasted on tedious expense reports
• Limited visibility into real-time business expenses
• Slowed processes due to lost receipts and mismatched payments
• Low confidence in the ability to scale

If any of these issues spark recurring conversations or complaints from finance teams, admins, and employees, a new business purchasing process may be in order. P-cards offer an innovative and safe option for companies and are more robust when combined with the correct expense management software.

Why Companies Should Combine P-Cards and Expense Management Software

The most modern P-card on the market should provide built-in adjustable controls capable of tying P-card transactions back to expense policies. That’s why the most efficient P-cards are attached to end-to-end solutions offering heightened security controls. An end-to-end expense management system features:

Efficient Approval Workflows

Throughout the approval process, P-cards should ideally match a company’s expense policy against every purchase. Charges within that policy are approved automatically as set parameters create a control for each card account. 

Anything questionable receives a flag for manual approval. These automated approvals can still leave a clear audit trail while minimizing back-and-forth communication. Finance teams are more likely to catch fraudulent transactions and stop unauthorized expenses before they happen.

Automated Accounting Entries

Modern expense management solutions should also integrate with most accounting systems. When that integration occurs, real-time data seamlessly syncs, reducing the workload for finance teams.

Automation streamlines closing the books each month by eliminating double entries and decluttering systems. Given better spending visibility, finance leaders can strategically make timely decisions with data-driven reports.

Heightened Security

With P-card use, every employee can be a cardholder by attaching the same purchasing card program to virtual cards. Generating single cards, cards for recurring expenses, or cards with precise expiration dates is possible. These unique virtual cards offer greater security against fraudsters because the virtual credit card number is untraceable without access to a cardholder's identity or computer system.

A P-Card That Scales With Companies

P-cards are necessary for a more secure and convenient payment vehicle to handle company expenses. However, P-card systems will not add value to the spend management process if they aren’t built to scale.

With Navan, companies can combine a P-card with an award-winning expense management solution that runs the entire spend ecosystem, eliminating manual processes and high transaction fees associated with other P-card providers.

P-cards tied to a spend management system like Navan enable companies to generate more ROI by reducing processing costs, preventing fraud, and providing insightful data that connects revenue to spend.

Navan solves the problem of using legacy corporate purchase cards by giving you control over your company’s entire spend ecosystem. Ready to start using Navan today? Get in touch.