It used to be the case that a fuel card bought fuel and fuel alone, but Britain’s biggest fuel card company is quickly redefining the sector.

Fleetcor – parent company of Allstar, Keyfuels and The Fuelcard Company – wants to become a ‘total payment solution’ for fleets.

It is hoping to tap into a growing number of organisations that are looking at merging fleet, travel and expense management to improve cost control and compliance. 

Billed as mobility management, it could provide the ideal opportunity for Fleetcor to widen its fuel card offering by allowing cardholders to use it to pay for a range of services and products.

“If you think about where you can go with this type of concept, the more you think about it the more excited you get,” enthuses Peter Bridgen, managing director of Fleetcor’s fuel card business.

Allstar customers can already use their card to pay for glass, tyres and the M6 toll, while a service, maintenance and repair (SMR) product was launched last month (Fleet News, April 16).

The new service, which offers fleets a discount of up to 20%, is primarily aimed at small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), because larger fleets typically have SMR bolted on to their leasing costs.

Bridgen says: “We’re not interested in the part of the market that is already being catered for by leasing companies. This is particularly for those SMEs that do not have maintenance agreements.”

The network of garages and service centres, where the Allstar fuel card can be used to pay for SMR costs, is around 4,000, but it is expected to grow to 9,000 before the end of the year.

“It’s another step towards making Fleetcor a total payment solution,” says Bridgen.

Integration at heart of fuel card

The acquisition of technology company Epyx in 2013, which via its link platform enables fleets to order cars and manage and process SMR online, helped Allstar develop the SMR offering.

Its understanding of the sector proved invaluable and Bridgen expects to tap into all of Fleetcor’s UK companies to grow its existing suite of products. That includes telematics company Masternaut, in which it recently acquired a 45% stake.

Bridgen says: “We think we can deliver some cutting-edge integrated services, but we also need to be able to work with whatever telematics systems fleets may already be using.”

But, there is also a realisation that not everybody will share Fleetcor’s enthusiasm for a total payment solution.

“We just want to offer our customers choice,” says Bridgen. “We’re fully aware some customers just want a simple fuel card to buy their diesel and we don’t want to push products to customers that they don’t want, so this is about being selective and asking our customers ‘what do they want from a fuel card service?’”

Bridgen believes it is convenience, control and cost savings that will bring the company success, while also acknowledging and rectifying past mistakes.

He first joined Keyfuels some 15 years ago, before being made managing director in 2007, after Fleetcor bought the company.

It added The Fuelcard Company to its growing portfolio the same year, but made its biggest acquisition in 2011, when it bought the Allstar fuel card from Arval.

Bridgen was appointed managing director of all three business in April last year, after the previous MD Callum Gibson left Fleetcor.

Gibson, with his payment card history, had begun the hard work of shaping the products that are now starting to come to fruition.

But he was also at the helm two years ago when a change in terms and conditions and software failings left some Allstar customers smarting.  

FleetCor announced that it was to start charging an administration fee for every transaction on its Allstar fuel card, a move condemned by fleet operators.

Much of the harshest criticism focused on the way the charges were hidden on invoices rather than transparently declared by the company ahead of their introduction.

It was a difficult time for the business, which Bridgen admits could have been handled better.

“It was challenging,” he says. “The reason we introduced the fees was so we could invest in the network and invest in our products. What our customers are seeing now is the result of that investment.”

However, the issue of transaction charges was compounded when Fleetcor began transferring its entire Allstar customer base across to its own IT system.

It was important for the business to migrate from Arval’s ageing platform to a modern, flexible solution, but Fleetcor underestimated the task of switching more than 30,000 customers and the details of 1.1 million cardholders.

It left many fleets unable to access crucial data, including private mileage which was key for HMRC reporting purposes. And, while Fleetcor struggled to rectify its software woes, the situation was exacerbated by an under-resourced call centre, with fleets unable to speak to operators.

“Our account management wasn’t as good as it could have been,” says Bridgen. “To address that, we’ve made some real improvements. We’re much more proactive in terms of talking to our customers on a much more regular basis and by offering timely reports with different kinds of management information.”

But, he adds: “We only deserve customer loyalty if we’re providing what the customer wants, in the right way, with the right level of service and with the right level of customer management.”

Fleetcor has already moved to counter any frustration from Allstar’s pump price status by launching a diesel discount programme in February, last year.

The Allstar Premier Programme added some 1,700 discounted sites to its network of more than 7,600 fuel sites.Customers have two fuel cards – an Allstar card and  the Allstar Discount Diesel card for use in the discount  diesel network.

Fleet managers, however, receive one invoice and one data report covering all Allstar and Allstar Discount Diesel transactions.

According to Fleetcor, customers using the Allstar Discount Diesel card can save up to four pence per litre, and  savings for a fleet of 100 vehicles can be as much as £20,000 per year.

More change expected

Further developments in the Allstar Premier Programme are in the pipeline and initial take-up, especially from mixed fleets, has been good.

More recently, Fleetcor announced that chip-and-pin was being added to the Allstar fuel card. The roll-out of the more secure cards began last month (some six years after Arval started developing the technology).

However, Fleetcor has said it would be carefully undertaken, on a customer-by-customer basis, and it is expected to be completed by the end of 2015.

“Physically, you cannot do it in one go, nor would you want to from a customer’s perspective,” explains Bridgen. “It’s a change for us, it’s a change for the customer and it’s a change for the network, so you’ve got to make sure it’s done as seamlessly as possible.”

But what can customers expect next from Fleetcor? Bridgen says: “Watch this space. Over the next few months we will be launching new products which are aimed at providing our customers with better value and increased convenience. Then next year we will see something that taps into total mobility solutions.”

However, he adds that it was important the company continued listening to its customers and reacting to what they are saying.

He explains: “I want to make sure that if our customers say to us these are the kind of services or products we require and this is how we want them to be delivered, then we set ourselves up to deliver those, with the knowledge that customers have different requirements and we can adapt to their needs.”

And, to those former customers, who may have left in the wake of the problems they faced two years ago, Bridgen says: “We’ve listened through those hard times and we’ve learned a lot. We don’t want customers leaving us, so we see this as an opportunity to launch products that will persuade them to come back.”