The card is not a "perk". It's not there to make expenses that benefit you.
For travel expenses, it gives the company more control/monitoring and a tiny percentage benefit because they get the equivalent of cashback/points, not you (for you, the advantage is that you aren't required to front the company the money).
For non-travel expenses, it means you can spend company money on tools without wasting hours over $20 in shitty bureaucratic spending processes meant for much bigger purchases. If you need a specific adapter for work, and your manager approves that, you can buy it from Amazon or your local retailer, rather than filing a request to add a vendor to your purchasing system so this $20 item can hopefully be delivered in two months.
The alternatives are either you paying the $20 out of pocket because you don't want to deal with the hassle (i.e. essentially the business blackmailing you into donating money to them with the threat that your work would really suck otherwise), or you literally telling your boss, for months, that that urgent project is still waiting on that adapter, which is waiting on the approval that typically comes within 2-3 months.
I was once on a team part of which was putting procurement cards into our (local, British) government. We were doing it to save money: the cost of processing an invoice on paper was ~£10, and effective controls on petty cash were difficult.
It worked. We got less bureaucracy, lower costs, and better management data. The project was neither controversial nor expensive. Why would it be?
For travel expenses, it gives the company more control/monitoring and a tiny percentage benefit because they get the equivalent of cashback/points, not you (for you, the advantage is that you aren't required to front the company the money).
For non-travel expenses, it means you can spend company money on tools without wasting hours over $20 in shitty bureaucratic spending processes meant for much bigger purchases. If you need a specific adapter for work, and your manager approves that, you can buy it from Amazon or your local retailer, rather than filing a request to add a vendor to your purchasing system so this $20 item can hopefully be delivered in two months.
The alternatives are either you paying the $20 out of pocket because you don't want to deal with the hassle (i.e. essentially the business blackmailing you into donating money to them with the threat that your work would really suck otherwise), or you literally telling your boss, for months, that that urgent project is still waiting on that adapter, which is waiting on the approval that typically comes within 2-3 months.