Fleet card

A fuel card or fleet card is used as a payment card most commonly for gasoline, diesel, and other fuels at gas stations. Fleet cards can also be used to pay for vehicle maintenance and expenses at the discretion of the fleet owner or manager.

Fleet cards are unique due to the convenient and comprehensive reporting that accompanies their use. Fleet cards enable fleet owners/ managers to receive real time reports and set purchase controls with their cards helping them to stay informed of all business related expenses.

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 Edenred, Fleetcor, Petrol Plus Region, Fuelman, Fleetcard and others.

In its infancy, fuel cards were only printed with the company name, vehicle registration and a signature strip on the reverse. No electronic data was stored. 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. For example, in 1983, the Keyfuels site network consisted of only seven stations. Therefore, they were initially targeted at haulage or delivery companies. A few years later, cards became embossed rather than printed. This was due to provide the cards with a greater longevity — frequent use would rub off the printed information.

Due to the lack of electronic data on the fuel cards at this stage, transactions would be recorded by the card being 'stamped' onto a manual transaction sheet. Further details detailing date, time, volume, grade of fuel and registration would be hand-written.

During the mid to late 1980s, fuel cards began to use magnetic strip technology. This meant fuel cards could be processed by a retailer electronically and reduced the risk of human error when recording transaction details.

Magnetic strips also enabled fuel card providers to increase fuel card security by ensuring PINs were encoded into the card. Although it should be noted that when the magnetic strip is swiped though a fuel card reader, the transaction is still only verified by checking signatories to this day.

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Wikipedia