Usage of commercial cards is growing: Capgemini estimate that that global commercial card purchases reached US$1.8 trillion in 2015, up from US$1.4 trillion in 2013.* A recent Citi survey of the use of commercial cards in the EMEA region showed that to exploit the potential for working capital management improvements through the use of commercial cards companies need to:

• enhance card analytics programme data and reporting 
• use commercial cards to improve global compliance and control of spending (only 50% of companies in the survey use specific bench marks and target metrics to track their commercial card programme’s performance)
• focus on earning rebates and other incentives 
• ensure that the corporate treasury department is involved in selecting and managing the commercial card provider
• choose providers that have global card acceptance, global reporting tools and a global proprietary footprint
• focus maximising the use of cards by ensuring that employees use and manage their cards effectively (survey showed that a huge disparity between why the surveyed companies believed that main reasons for card transactions and the actual reasons for card declines)

For a copy of the report ‘The Commercial Card Blueprint: Digital, Centralised and Globally Compliant’ click here.