The fleet card industry remains highly fragmented, but analysts predict the market to expand by $35 billion in just a few years. Many experts agree that technology – the use of Big Data and analytics – to manage expenses will likely help streamline the fuel card market while saving businesses money at the same time.
WEX, which offers its own fleet card solutions and other expense management tools, is one such company looking to strengthen its digital services for fleet managers. On Tuesday (June 2), the company announced a new collaboration with General Electric’s GE Capital Transportation Finance to launch a new fuel card program for over-the-road fleet.
According to an announcement, the new program includes features that expand fleet managers’ insight into operations. Among those features include new reporting and fuel savings features, fraud reduction and other controls. As an alternative to credit or debit cards, WEX and GE are launching the Fleet One OTR fuel card that provides businesses with both fuel rebates and greater access to data. The Fleet One OTR card will also reportedly include WEX expense reporting tools, which the companies said would likely strengthen businesses’ security and accuracy while managing their fleet-related funds.
Earlier this year, WEX CEO Melissa Smith spoke at the PYMNTS Innovation Project 2015 “From Payments To Commerce” discussion, during which she highlighted the need for companies to combine mobile, Big Data, the cloud and applications to increase payments’ visibility across the globe.
“There’s been a lot of discussion on how data is becoming more important to the end user, and how technology is changing rapidly, but also becoming less expensive, which is affecting adoption,” Smith said in a later interview with PYMNTS.
The fleet industry is no exception to this adoption of high-tech tools. A Frost and Sullivan report released last month revealed that the existing telematics and M2M capabilities in many fleet markets give the industry a jump start on adopting Big Data tools and analytics.