Center's survey explains employees' feelings about using personal cards for work

For the survey, the company asked over 500 business spenders — employees who make purchases or travel on behalf of their company — how they feel about using personal cards for work expenses. It highlights that:

Nearly 70% of corporate cardholders still use personal cards for business expenses. 25% use personal cards because their corporate card isn’t accepted everywhere.

• 60% of those who choose to use a personal card over a corporate card do so to earn points, rewards or cash back. 

• 87% of respondents agree that ‘Employees should be trusted to make the right decisions on purchasing’, but 51% of respondents have a corporate credit card. 

• Nearly 80% believe that ‘employees want to use personal cards to earn points’. 52% agreed that ‘it’s reasonable for companies to ask employees to use personal cards to pay for business expenses and wait for reimbursement’.

• 49% of respondents use personal cards for work expenses because they hadn’t been issued a corporate card or because their company did not have a corporate card programme. 

• 51% also said there are burdens that come with using personal cards, such as financial impacts, stress around reimbursement timing, embarrassment when they don’t have enough credit available, and a sense of unfairness that they have to use their own money for business expenses.

• Nearly 70% of those who use personal cards for work, whether by choice or necessity, carry or sometimes carry a balance on their personal credit cards.