A CFO’s guide on prepaid, credit, debit and virtual cards
The PEX card lineup
- PEX Visa® Prepaid Card: A preloaded, reloadable card that lets you assign budgets in advance, limit usage by category or time and track every transaction in real time. Ideal for managing field teams, contractors or departments with fixed spend
- PEX Visa® Commercial Card / PEX virtual cards: Issued instantly and used for specific purchases or vendors. Cards can be locked by merchant, dollar amount or timeframe. Perfect for software subscriptions, vendor payments and employee T&E with built-in controls
- PEX Visa® Disburse Card: Tailored for grants, stipends or program-based payouts where funds need to be disbursed securely but flexibly. Often used in nonprofits, education and human services
Choosing the right corporate card is harder than it should be. Finance teams need to control spending, move faster and close the books cleanly—but shared cards, reimbursements and scattered receipts slow everything down. Vendor payments sit in different tools, audits drag on and month-end close takes longer than it should.
That’s why card type matters. Credit, prepaid, debit and virtual cards each solve different pain points. With the right mix, and a platform that automates controls and visibility, finance teams can eliminate manual work, enforce policy automatically and stay ahead of spend.
This guide breaks down each card type, the problems they solve and how modern finance teams use them to scale with confidence.
What is the difference between prepaid, credit, debit and virtual cards?
What is a disburse card?
A disburse card is a type of prepaid card used to send funds to non-employees—like program participants or grant recipients. It solves one of the biggest audit headaches finance teams deal with: grant funds that are hard to track and even harder to reconcile.
With the Disburse Card, organizations can:
- Load cards with a set amount for a specific purpose
- Restrict spending to approved categories or vendors
- Monitor usage in real time
BlueBridge Alliance, a nonprofit supporting community policing programs, uses PEX Disburse cards to fund officer-led outreach programs. By switching to PEX, they eliminated manual data entry and saved 10 hours per week on bookkeeping while gaining better oversight of distributed funds.
What is a corporate credit card?
A corporate credit card gives businesses access to a line of credit, typically paid off monthly. But traditional bank credit cards often create blind spots. Lack of real-time controls, vague merchant categories and delayed reporting make overspending easy and audits painful.
PEX Credit Expense changes that. It lets finance teams:
- Set limits by user or category
- Require pre-approvals
- Track every transaction as it happens
- Earn 1% back on eligible purchases
Wheelhouse Group, a media and entertainment firm, used PEX Credit Expense to streamline their financial operations during fast-paced production seasons. By controlling vendor payments and tracking spend per project, they significantly reduced their reconciliation workload by 4 hours per month and accelerated close cycles.
What is a prepaid card?
Prepaid cards use funds loaded in advance, which removes the risk of overspending and eliminates employee reimbursements—one of the most time-consuming, error-prone processes in finance. They directly address:
- Scattered receipts
- Inconsistent GL coding
- Slow month-end close
- Reimbursement processing headaches
PEX Prepaid Expense lets finance teams:
- Assign a role, a team or a location to a card
- Enforce usage rules
- See every transaction in real time
- Capture receipts and code expenses automatically
Shannon Staley & Sons, a construction contractor, used prepaid cards to give site managers access to job-specific funds. This change saved the finance team 50 hours a week on reconciliations and improved tracking across dozens of active projects.
What is a virtual card?
Virtual cards are digital-only cards ideal for vendor payments, subscriptions and one-time online purchases. They solve major compliance and fraud risks caused by:
- Shared physical cards
- Recurring charges spread across tools
- Vendor billing errors
- Audits slowed down by missing documentation
PEX Virtual Cards can be issued instantly, locked to a merchant, and set to expire on a specific date. With them, companies can:
- Prevent fraud and unauthorized charges
- Limit spending to a dollar amount or category
- Streamline reconciliation with integrations
- Earn 1% back on qualifying vendor purchases
Southwestern Healthcare improved expense compliance by issuing virtual cards to clinical team leads. With built-in receipt capture and real-time tracking, the organization increased receipt submission compliance to over 95% while eliminating the need to chase down paper receipts.
What makes PEX different from other corporate cards?
PEX corporate cards connect to a platform built for control, not just convenience. Finance teams get real-time visibility, automated controls and workflows that reduce manual work and improve accuracy. Admins can manage budgets, approve spend and track every transaction from a single dashboard. Cardholders get clear limits, easy mobile tools and prompts that make compliance simple. Together, these features help teams move faster while staying in control—saving up to 8,700 hours each year and cutting labor costs by more than $209K.
Full control over spend for admins
- Set rules by vendor, amount, time or location
- Group users by role and assign permissions
- Lock cards automatically when receipts are missing
- Sync spending data to accounting tools like NetSuite or QuickBooks
Ease of use for cardholders
- Snap and upload receipts by phone, text or email
- Get prompts to tag expenses with the right GL code
- Use virtual cards for vendors or single purchases
- Follow spending limits without extra training
With PEX, the platform does the heavy lifting—so finance teams can spend less time chasing details and more time driving strategy.
How to choose the right card for your team
| Your need | Best card type | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Control spending on field teams, job sites or decentralized staff | PEX Prepaid Expense | Budgets loaded upfront, rules enforce spend, real-time tracking prevents overspend |
| Manage recurring vendor payments or SaaS subscriptions | PEX Virtual Cards | Merchant-locked, single-use or recurring controls, fraud reduction |
| Maintain cash flow while enforcing controls | PEX Credit Expense | Working capital + real-time rules and pre-approvals |
| Distribute funds for grants, programs or non-employees | PEX Disburse Cards | Purpose-based funding, category restrictions, transparent reporting |
| Reduce reconciliation workload and speed up month-end close | Any PEX card + platform | Automated coding, receipt capture, real-time sync to 50+ accounting tools |
Take control of your company’s spend
If you’re relying on outdated tools like shared cards or manual reimbursements, it’s time for a change. PEX offers a modern spend management platform with flexible corporate card options, real-time visibility and automated controls that help organizations like yours
- Reclaim up to 8,700 hours annually through automated receipt matching, tagging and batch processing
- Avoid $209,000 in headcount costs over three years by scaling with automation instead of additional hires
- Gain $34,200 in financial return over three years through built-in platform efficiencies and 1% back on eligible spend
- Improve financial close efficiency by 192 hours per year through real-time visibility and ERP sync
Ready to discover PEX’s corporate cards even more? Book a personalized demo now.
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