In the UK the majority of commercial and pre-paid cards are branded products from the Amex, MasterCard or Visa stables and Arval for fuel cards
Business Payment Cards come under a variety of nomenclatures, Corporate, Charge, Procurement, Lodge, Purchasing, Pre-Paid and Fuel Cards being just some as well as a variety of specialist Payments Cards.

The term ‘Card’ is in itself somewhat misleading because many of the products now becoming available offer much more than just a piece of plastic. Indeed it is perfectly normal to run a card programme without any cards.

Increasingly we are seeing Issuers and specialist companies offering a whole range of flexible purchasing solutions built around payment card functionality which can provide pre-purchase controls on the one hand and electronic delivery and manipulation of statements and management information on the other.

Closed loop and hosted cards are terms for card usage where purchases are restricted to particular suppliers nominated by the buying organisation.