Breaking the Monopoly: Moving Outside of Legacy Fuel Cards
Accepting payments from proprietary card networks has been an absolute must for truck stop operators. Years ago, there were many fleet card companies battling for market share, with transactions being run on separate pieces of hardware on a truck stop counter. Today, FleetCor and WEX have consolidated the fleet fuel payments industry into a tightly controlled duopoly, where the leading POS system is even owned by FleetCor, creating a moat for aspiring competitors. Because of this, independent truck stops have lost their negotiating power, and processing rates are out of control.
A new payments disruption is well underway, and it’s moving far quicker than anyone has imagined. Fuel payments are being moved online, outside of proprietary card networks. This allows for cheaper processing costs, more competitive pricing, and the opportunity for smaller truck stop players to grow their market share of gallons.
Like any market disruption, it can be loud, messy, and frustrating to deal with. Enter: Direct Fuel Sales (“DFS”). DFS allows merchants to process these online transactions at best-in-industry processing rates and dramatically grow their diesel sales.
Direct Fuel Sales understands the pain merchants go through dealing with incumbent fleet card companies and has designed a program to help merchants succeed. This is accomplished with a low and unchanging processing rate and a locked, exclusive, merchant territory. This means DFS controls significant volume in all markets and can funnel it to participating merchants. DFS is currently working with 5 channel partners including TruckerPath, the largest trucking app in the US, with nearly 1M daily active users. All channel partners are major industry leading driver applications that account for between 1M to 1.5M daily users. Using this distribution network allows DFS to focus on its real customer: the merchant.
DFS has state-of-the-art reporting software and has a simple system for cashiers to use. The fees, system, and reporting are simple. Most importantly, the structure won’t change and exists to serve the merchant.
Call us to see if your truck stop(s) fit into the rapidly growing network.
Johnny Howard
Account Executive
541-253-4512