DEFINITION
Purchasing Card (P-Card)
A purchasing card is a company payment card issued to employees for low-value business purchases, bypassing the full requisition and purchase order process. The efficiency gain comes at the cost of reduced preventive control.
Because P-Card spend avoids the purchase order and three-way match path, its control relies largely on merchant category restrictions, transaction limits, and after-the-fact review of statements.
The recurring risks are split purchases to stay under single-transaction limits, spend at prohibited merchant categories, personal purchases coded to business categories, and cards that remain active after the holder leaves.