Car IQ Offers Tool to Bypass High-Cost Fueling Stations

Vehicle-based payments firm Car IQ has introduced a new fuel-spend control feature.

Station Controls, announced by the company Monday (Oct. 6), is part of the Car IQ Pay platform that offers fleets real-time control over fuel spend by automatically blocking high-cost stations and steering drivers to more cost-effective alternatives nearest to them.

“Fuel remains the largest and most volatile expense for most fleets. Yet traditional fuel cards only provide visibility after the fact—when the monthly invoice arrives,” the company said in a news release. “Car IQ’s analysis of hundreds of thousands of fleet transactions found that drivers choose expensive stations nearly 1 in 5 times, adding as much as 36¢ per gallon in unnecessary costs.”

According to the release, Station Controls turns fueling into a “pre-transaction process,” as the vehicle itself becomes the payment method. That gives the system access to the data that cards can’t see, such as vehicle location, fuel levels, and the real-time prices at stations nearby. With this data, Station Controls blocks high-cost stations and sends drivers to better options.

“Over the past several years, we’ve analyzed hundreds of thousands of transactions and uncovered a clear trend: drivers often fuel at higher-priced stations, driving up costs per gallon,” said Kate Coomber, director of marketing at Car IQ. “For too long, fleets have been stuck using fuel cards and reacting to spend after the fact. The real opportunity now lies in shifting to real-time control—giving fleets the ability to proactively manage fuel spend and significantly reduce costs.”

The announcement comes on the heels of Car IQ’s recent partnership with BlueArrow Telematics to offer fleet operators a digital payments solution that replaces fuel cards.

The new BlueArrow Pay is powered by Car IQ’s vehicle-based payment technology and BlueArrow’s connected fleet solutions, using real-time telematics data to authenticate transactions and let vehicles connect to merchants and complete payments automatically.

“The solution eliminates the need for manual driver input or physical cards, lowers costs, improves transaction security, reduces opportunities for fraud and administrative error, and simplifies expense oversight,” PYMNTS noted at the time.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS spoke earlier this year with Parker Patton, global head of Visa Commercial Fleet Solutions, after Visa added Google Pay and Apple Pay to its fleet cards.

As that report noted, the move to wallets coincides with a wider rethink of what constitutes a fleet. “When people hear ‘fleet,’ they picture a thousand yellow trucks,” Patton said. “But Uber drivers are a fleet. Amazon delivery vans are a fleet. DoorDashers on e‑bikes? Also a fleet.”

In an on‑demand economy, that report said any collection of vehicles — owned, leased or contracted — is fair game.

“Visa’s strategy is to future‑proof against that fragmentation. Fleet 2.0, the company’s next‑gen platform, already supports EV charging, tolling and maintenance,” PYMNTS added. “By making those rails wallet‑native, Visa is betting it can service both legacy carriers and the gig‑powered last mile with the same credentials.”