News from the Wire

Mercator reports on commercial card spending controls, finding a balance

Thursday, April 17, 2014 — 10:50:07 (EDT)

Boston, April 16, 2014 -- Part of the success of a commercial card spending program is actually being able to transform check and cash spend to a card. If card spending controls are overly restrictive, many transactions are declined at the point of sale. This leads cardholders to put the cards in a desk drawer and use alternative payment methods to make purchases.

Mercator Advisory Group's newest Research Note, Commercial Card Controls: Finding a Balance Between Control and Usability, examines how too-stringent card controls can hurt company card programs more than benefit them. The Note recommends ways to improve card use.

"Commercial card controls have gotten more sophisticated over the years, and not all of them are really necessary,” comments Amy Hoke, Director of Mercator Advisory Group’s Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service and author of the report. “If you have an employee that you are trusting to perform key tasks in your business you should be able to trust them to use a company card appropriately without undue restrictions.”

Highlights of the Research Note include:

• How commercial card controls work
• Designing control profiles
• Survey data on use of P-card and one-card controls by program managers
• Effectiveness of card controls
• Tales of card misuse from the news

The Research Note is 11 pages long and contains 8 exhibits.

Companies mentioned in this report Visa and MasterCard.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group's Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service have access to this report as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access and other membership benefits.

Please visit us online at www.mercatoradvisorygroup.com . For more information and media inquiries, please call Mercator Advisory Group's main line: (781) 419-1700. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/MercatorAdvisor .

About Mercator Advisory Group Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com .

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Source: Company press release.