What is Card Fraud?
Card fraud is the unauthorized or deceptive use of a payment card — debit, credit, or corporate card — to obtain goods, services, or funds without authorization or in violation of applicable policies. For corporate finance and audit teams, card fraud covers two distinct risks: external card fraud (third parties misusing company card data) and internal card fraud (employees misusing corporate cards for personal expenses or policy violations).
Types of card fraud in a corporate context
- Personal expenses coded as business: employees charging personal meals, travel, or purchases on corporate cards
- Policy violations: expenses above authorization limits, unapproved categories, or transactions without required receipts
- Split transactions: deliberately splitting a purchase into multiple transactions to stay below approval thresholds
- Fictitious expenses: fabricating receipts or transactions for reimbursement
- External card compromise: unauthorized use of corporate card numbers by third parties following data breaches
How internal controls prevent card fraud
Spending limits by category and merchant type, mandatory receipt upload within defined deadlines, manager approval workflows for expenses above thresholds, automatic flagging of duplicate claims, and continuous monitoring of card transaction patterns.
Card Fraud and Supervizor
Supervizor's T&E fraud detection analyzes 100% of expense claims and card transactions — flagging duplicate claims, split transactions, weekend/holiday purchases, claims exceeding policy limits, and statistical outliers that manual review would miss.
Related Supervizor pages
→ T&E fraud prevention — continuous expense monitoring
→ AI & Controls — expense and card fraud controls