What Delaware State Employees Buy on Government Credit Cards

When a Delaware state employee needs office supplies, a replacement laptop or a hotel room for a work trip, they often pay with a government credit card — a "purchasing card," or p-card. In fiscal year 2026 those cards racked up $84.49 million across 189,696 transactions, an average charge of about $445. And because Delaware publishes every single swipe, we can see exactly where that money went.

What is a purchasing card, exactly?

A purchasing card is a state-issued credit card meant for small, routine purchases. Instead of filling out a purchase order and waiting weeks for approval, an employee can buy what they need — a case of paper, a part for a broken pump, an airline ticket — and the state pays the card bill directly. It is faster for everyone, and in Delaware it comes with a catch that favors the public: every transaction is published on the state's open-data portal, with the merchant, the amount and the type of business that got the money. Nothing in this article is estimated — it all comes from the state's own ledger.

The merchants that get the most p-card business

One name towers over the ledger: Verizon. State employees paid $2.43 million to "Verizon Bill Payment" across 452 transactions — about $5,400 per payment — plus another $1.66 million to "Verizon Wireless." Together that is roughly $4.09 million to Verizon alone, making the phone giant the undisputed king of Delaware's p-card spending.

Source: State Employee Credit Card Transactions, data.delaware.gov, aggregated from 189,696 FY2026 transactions.

The patterns behind the numbers are as telling as the totals. Grainger, the industrial-supply retailer, is the volume champion: $2.01 million spread across 5,225 purchases — about $385 a pop, the signature of thousands of small orders for tools, parts and equipment. H. Schrier And Co. Inc. shows the opposite pattern: $2.17 million in just 23 charges, an average of roughly $94,000 each — big-ticket orders, not everyday swipes. And DMI — Dell's K-12 and government sales arm — took in $1.28 million across 970 purchases, a steady stream of computers and equipment for schools and agencies.

What the money buys, in plain English

Every p-card charge carries a merchant category label assigned by the card networks. Translated out of card-industry jargon, here is what Delaware's FY2026 p-card money actually bought:

Travel stands out once you group the categories: lodging ($4.39 million) plus airfare ($2.06 million) means roughly $6.45 million of p-card spending went to state employees being somewhere other than their offices — conferences, training and field work. Book stores at $3.06 million largely reflects schools and universities buying textbooks and course materials.

A rounding error in a $17.03 billion checkbook — and one missing year

$84.49 million sounds like a lot until you set it next to the state's full checkbook: $17.03 billion in payments in FY2026. P-cards account for about half of one percent (0.5%) of everything Delaware paid out — for every $1,000 the state spent, roughly $5 went on an employee credit card. The big money in Delaware's budget — Medicaid, salaries, pensions, school funding — moves by check and electronic transfer, not plastic.

One caveat worth knowing: fiscal year 2025 is currently missing from the state's open-data portal. The credit card dataset jumps straight from FY2024 to FY2026, so no year-over-year comparison with FY2025 is possible right now. Against the last fully published year, FY2024's $84.82 million, p-card spending in FY2026 was essentially flat.

Frequently asked questions

How much do Delaware state employees spend on government credit cards?

In FY2026, $84.49 million across 189,696 transactions — an average charge of about $445.

What is a purchasing card (p-card)?

A state-issued credit card for small, routine purchases — supplies, phone bills, travel — that skips the formal purchase-order process. The state pays the bill, and every transaction is published as open data.

What do state employees buy on p-cards?

Mostly the boring essentials of running a government: phone and telecom services ($5.22 million), industrial supplies ($4.72 million), business services ($4.69 million), utilities ($4.47 million) and lodging ($4.39 million) were the top categories in FY2026.

Can I look up individual credit card transactions?

Yes — every one is public. Use our interactive Credit Card explorer, or the state's raw dataset on data.delaware.gov.