COMMERCIAL CARDS CONTINUE TO GAIN GROUND.(Brief Article)

Commercial cards of all types accounted for 9.6% of $1.56 trillion in Visa-MasterCard U.S. charge volume in 2003, up from 5.4% of $650 billion of volume 1997, according to Mercator Advisory Group figures MasterCard International cited Thursday at Thomson Media's 9th Annual Small Business Banking Conference in Chicago. This year to date, commercial card volume accounts for 12.3% of MasterCard volume, up from 11.2% in 2003, says Steve L. Abrams, senior vice president of commercial payment solutions for Purchase, NY-based MasterCard. Driving the growth are aggressive efforts by issuers to get cards into the hands of …