Purchasing cards are one of the best practices of accounting in private companies to streamline their accounts payable function and already common in public authorities in other countries and private companies, but not been used in public procurement in Germany so far. This paper is about their possible use in public procurement in Germany. Based on existing purchasing card systems in private companies and in the public sector of other countries, a model of a purchasing card system in the context of public procurement in Germany is developed.The author's model takes the issues German authorities will be faced with into consideration, e.g. the special budget law and contract awarding regulations. In addition, the paper will show the advantages of using a purchasing card system against the current system. In order that interested authorities could introduce purchasing cards easier some help for implementing the system will be given beside the plain model.The findings of this theoretical and conceptual work will give a first impression of purchasing cards in public procurement in German authorities, necessary preconditions for them and a possible way of implementation of such a system. They will uncover purchasing cards as an instrument for a more efficient public procurement in Germany and have a significant added value to that new topic for the public sector in Germany.The author, Simon Bannenberg, works in a procurement department of a German federal authority and wrote his Master Thesis in the context of his extra-occupational study programme in Business Administration at FOM about purchasing cards as instrument for a more efficient public procurement in Germany.Die Arbeit wurde in Englisch verfasst. Diese Veröffentlichung enthält zusätzlich eine ausführlichere Zusammenfassung der wesentlichen Inhalte in Deutsch.