Fuel card

Fleet cards can be provided not only by oil brands like Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, but also by companies that only specialize in providing fuel cards such as Greenarc, Edenred, WEX Inc., Comdata, FleetCards USA, Petrol Plus Region, Fuelman and others.

In its infancy, fuel cards were only printed with the company name, vehicle registration and a signature strip on the reverse.

Fuelling sites would verify the company, vehicle registration (on the forecourt) against the card and also the signature written on the back.

The site would allow access to the fuel once the retailer's receipt had been signed for and cross checked against the signature written on the back of the card.

Initially, fuel card networks were very small and based around truck roads and main haulage routes.

This meant fuel cards could be processed by a retailer electronically and reduced the risk of human error when recording transaction details.

Although when the magnetic strip is swiped though a fuel card reader, the transaction is still only verified by checking signatories to this day.

Smartchip technology (similar to Chip and PIN) is the largest development in the fuel card industry in recent years.

During 2008, market maturity has led to users increasingly expecting more from fuel cards than discount pricing, with the demand for service, savings and security leading to the appearance of dedicated account management.

[2][3] The longest running provider of fuel cards in Ireland is Fuelwise, with the company being founded in 1989 and growing to hold the largest site network and provide a range of services alongside fuel cards such as Telematics and Vehicle Walkaround Checks.

The invention of the magnetic stripe and magnetic card reader allowed petroleum marketers to control fuel pump transactions, leading to today's wide range of fleet card security features and state of the art reporting systems to track all fleet expenses.

Subsequently, various products aimed at various customer segments were launched by all oil companies – Smart fleet by Bharat Petroleum, XTRAPOWER by Indian Oil, Drive Track by Hindustan Petroleum, and Transconnect by Reliance Industries.

While Transconnect found favours during its launch, the same withered away once Reliance shut its outlets due to huge price difference.

[7] Typically, the majority of businesses using fuel cards are those which heavily rely on motor vehicles on a day-to-day basis e.g. transport, haulage, courier services.

A number of additional benefits are available for users of fuel cards from a supplier offering an e-business capability.

International site networks often use fully automatic fuel pumps to avoid possible language difficulties and are specially designed to account for different taxation regimes e.g. producing separate invoices for each country which fuel was purchased in a particular month to account for different rates of VAT charged.

Although retail is generally more expensive, there are a number of exceptions depending on the region, particular brand/site and timing of fuel purchased.