P-Cards have been a huge success in the US, but have at least to my knowledge largely been unsuccessful in Europe. The reason for the latter is that invoices are used to a very high extent.
I guess this must be due to a fundamental difference in business trust or that the way Europeans can "squeeze" money from a non-paying customer is more efficient than in the US. The problem with P-Cards is that they require centralized registers with users and their profiles. To maintain such data is tedious and expensive. Having a local security device that can "connect back" to the buyer's own organization, a single virtual account and schemes like 3D Secure can eliminate the need for external user administration as well as supporting immediate updates, revocation and enablement. In addition you get full transaction record for free. That does in my opinion give P-Cards a rather grim future. Any comments? Anders Rundgren X-OBI
