A review of the markets for corporate cards including a look at the business card, purchasing card and corporate card segments. This promising area stands to drive increases in transaction volume over the year ahead.

As the consumer credit market matures, issuers and credit card associations are seeking new sources of transaction volume. Commercial card market is one of them. While the consumer credit card charge volume grew at 9.8 percent from 1998 to 2002, commercial card market grew at a 20-30 percent rate. During this period, the commercial card volume growth rates for American Express, and MasterCard/Visa combined were 20 percent and 25.77 percent respectively.

Equipped with information management and e-business tools, commercial card programs offer corproations significant cost reductions in purchasing. And, as a result, their popularity is increasing.

Evren Bayri, Director of Mercator Advisory Group's Credit Advisory Service and author of the report comments, "although there have been very significant developments in the way companies conduct business today, we have yet to realize the end-to-end e-business vision. Companies still print out invoices, handle purchasing manually and use cash and checks for payment, especially for large ticket items. Solutions such as Visa Commerce and MasterCard e-P3 are designed to tackle these hurdles and get companies closer to this streamlined vision of the future."

This new Mercator Advisory Group report takes a closer look at this rapidly growing market, focusing on business cards, corporate cards and purchasing cards. It provides definitions, value propositions, market size, and example solutions for each category and highlights recent initiatives in the commercial card arena.

This report provides:

1. A review of the T&E, Small Business, and Purchasing card initiatives underway at the association level,

2. A look at the overall market size and the growing opportunity in this area, with an emphasis on the strong growth of American Express rivals Visa and MasterCard along with a market segmentation by leading issuers,

3. A discussion of solutions, market size and value propositions/business drivers for each sector,

4. A discussion on purchasing card process and the differences between Level II and Level III data as implemented in the market, and

5. A look at MasterCard’s new e-P3 and Visa’s Visa Commerce initiatives.

This report contains 31 pages and 16 exhibits.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group 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 call Mercator Advisory Group's main line: 508-845-5400 or send email to info@mercatoradvisorygroup.com.