Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/625735
32 commercial carrier journal | january 2016 technology Going mobile The fleet card is becoming a relic of the past By AAron Huff F or more than 30 years, fleet cards have been the standard method for drivers to pay for fuel and other approved expenses. But judging by the amounts invested in electronic payment companies, the technology has a bright future in the fleet market. In August 2014, FleetCor bought Comdata for $3.45 billion, and last October, Wex pur- chased Electronic Funds Source for $1.1 billion. Investors may be paying a premium for companies in this space because the technology is going mobile. Man- agers can use apps to handle tasks they otherwise would have to do from a desktop, such as monitoring fuel buying decisions, sending cash advances to drivers and turning their cards off when they quit. Meanwhile, drivers are using apps to supplement route planning by lo- cating fuel stops, checking fuel prices and finding parking availability and truck stop amenities. "A lot of stuff becomes pretty important to drivers," says Jeff Pape, senior vice president at U.S. Bank, which offers the Voyager Fleet payment card and network. This past summer, U.S. Bank launched the Voyager Mobile app that fleet managers can use to mon- itor drivers' fuel buying decisions, while drivers can use it to choose their fuel locations. Fleets can restrict fuel locations viewed by drivers to their own fuel network or expand it as they see fit. Once drivers perform a search and select a fuel location, the app automatically can open naviga- tion apps such as Google Maps. Comdata's FleetAdvance app allows a driver to search by current location or city and state to find the lowest fuel prices in a specific area. With a registered Comdata card, the app will display the best net price available to the driver. The app complements Comdata's Web-based FleetAdvance product that gives each fuel transaction a score from 1 to 100 to indicate how it compares to the lowest possible transaction at another location in the same market segment of the custom- er's fuel network. Fleet managers can view fuel transactions as they take place on a Google Map display. Virtual payments Wex's card and Wex Connect mobile app are used primarily by fleets with local operations. The company serves the over-the-road market through its EFS and Fleet One products. Drivers use Fleet One's mobile app to make low-cost fuel purchase deci- sions, but "there is a lot more we can do from there," says Phil Baker, manag- er of product management at Wex Inc. Mobile payments at the pump depend largely on how quickly point-of-sale systems will be able to support the new infrastructure, and Baker sees two primary pathways de- veloping. The first is to use near-field communications for the phone to talk directly to the POS system. The alternative is to create a cloud- based payment system in which a phone's app would communicate to a gateway connected to the POS system. "We are looking at both," he says. In the consumer space, it is not any more convenient or secure to pay for items with a phone versus a traditional bank card. Consumers are using mobile payment systems such as Google Wallet or Apple Pay because of loyalty reward programs, Baker says. By comparison, mobile payments in the fleet space have an added value opportunity. They can be used to capture additional data from the transaction, such as driver identifica- tion, location and odometer readings. Mobile devices also are becoming more common as the display unit for telematics systems in trucks. Since the telematics device already is commu- nicating the location of the vehicle to the cloud, POS systems instantly could verify the mobile device is at the same fuel pump location as the truck, creating an additional security layer for authorizing fuel transactions. "Mobile is the direction we are all headed," Baker says. in focus: ELECTRONIC PURCHASING Fleet managers use U.S. Bank's Voyager Mobile app to monitor drivers' fuel buying decisions, and drivers use it to choose their fueling locations.