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Most car rental companies will not allow you to reserve a rental car using a prepaid debit card, however, they will allow you to pay for the rental car with a prepaid debit card upon return of the vehicle.   Cardholders should first verify policies over the phone with the location where the vehicle will be retrieved before a reservation is made.  Most merchants share information online, however, those policies may not be location specific. Cardholders can use a credit card to reserve and retrieve vehicles then use the PEX card for payment upon return of the vehicle the car and once returning the car have the merchant run the transaction on the PEX card. Limiting Car Rentals with the PEX Card Business Administrators can prevent a cardholder from being able to rent a car with the PEX card by updating the Spend Rules for that cardholder.
  1. To restrict all car rentals, navigate to the Category table on the Spend Rules tab for the cardholder.
  2. Uncheck the boxes under the column “Travel & Transportation”
  3. The Card will then decline at all merchants within that category, including car rental companies, airlines, railroads, taxis, buses, and gas stations.
  4. Even if Travel & Transportation is not available to the cardholder (as described above), the Administrator can allow the cardholder to rent cars by creating a Custom Merchant Category which contains rental car companies that you want the cardholder to use, and giving the cardholder access to it.
Note:Changes to Spend Rules are real-time, so be sure to inform the cardholder of spend rule updates.For information on how to set or update spend rules, see How to Set Spend Rules on a Card and Managing Custom Merchant Categories.
Last modified on April 22, 2026