What's the best way to set up a pre-paid credit/debit card to use with a virtual assistant?

With a free American Express business card, you can have an additional card issued  in that persons name. You can set up rules, including limits, and automated alerts; they're issued a different account number.  With this account, you still pay one consolidated bill, but reports can separate purchases by cardholder name.

I would say that if you can't trust your assistant to that level then you don't have the right assistant. Perhaps take it slowly at first. Don't give your credit card initially, but after a while when you gain trust you should be able to. The risk is actually pretty low. You can usually reverse charges successfully, check your card regularly, set up alerts for larger purchases. The chance of having an issue is very low. Of course never give you bank account login! That's an entirely different thing.

Before I can answer your question, you have to understand that a virtual assistant has to be someone you can trust completely. If she is responsible for handling your emails, logging into your social media accounts, making phone calls on your behalf setting appointments with clients, you are already putting a lot of trust in her. Also keep in mind, being a VA is like owning a home business. She isn't going to jeopardize that for a few hundred or a few thousand bucks. However, it's very easy to setup a credit card and have the bank put a spending limit on it. Just call your banker and ask that they put a certain spending limit on it per week or per month. Ask your VA to print out a CC summary at the end of each week/month for you to see. You can further ask her to simplify the info by putting it into Excel with neat columns for Date, Amount and Vendor/Service so you can see at a glance how and how much was spent.

My virtual assistant company, http://www.worktango.com, makes getting a pre-paid credit/debit card unnecessary. We make all purchases on your behalf and then send you an invoice for the purchase. You can then pay for your product without having to give out your credit card information. You can find out other ways we're different from other virtual assistant companies here: http://www.worktango.com/our-story/

I haven't tried it yet but I have a couple of pre-paid credit cards. You can only pay for transactions up to the value that you have already charged the card with e.g. £100. This sounds like an ideal solution for using with your VA. I understand that it's important to trust your VA, but I wouldn't want to allow anyone to have access to one of my normal credit cards with several thousand pounds credit limit.