Fleet payment is changing. And so is what partners need from it.

Fleet payment is in motion, and it is moving faster than many existing products can keep up with. Regulation, EV adoption and a growing frustration among drivers and the businesses behind them are reshaping the market. The classic closed-loop fleet card that defined the past decade is running into limits, and partners across fuel, leasing, EV charging and parking are rethinking what to offer next.

This article unpacks what is driving the shift, where closed-loop still works and where it does not, and what open-loop acceptance with partner-side control looks like in practice.

What is driving the change

The pressure is coming from several directions at once.

Regulation.

AFIR, the EU’s Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, requires contactless bank-card payment at public high-power chargers across the EU.¹ PSD3 is tightening the rules around payment services, and NIS2 raises the compliance bar on critical infrastructure.² In the Netherlands, 18 cities now operate zero-emission zones that push commercial transport towards electric.³

Vehicles.

The share of electric vehicles in the Dutch fleet is growing year on year.⁴ The payment setup that worked when diesel was the default no longer matches what many fleets actually drive.

Users.

Drivers and the companies behind them are tired of running multiple cards, apps and tokens for what should be a single payment moment at the pump, charger or parking garage. The call for one consolidated setup, with the oversight businesses need, keeps coming back in our day-to-day customer conversations.

Where closed-loop still works, and where it starts to show its limits

Closed-loop fleet cards still have a place. For partners with a well-defined, single-service customer base, running a limited acceptance network is often still the right fit.

The strain shows up when the use case gets broader. Fleets that need fuel, charging, parking, car wash and tolls on one card. Partners that want to serve customers across several European markets. Drivers who need their card to work beyond the specific network their provider has built.

Those use cases do not break closed-loop. They do make it harder for closed-loop alone to cover the full customer base without workarounds.

Open-loop acceptance, with the control partners need

For many partners, the question is no longer whether to open up acceptance. It is how to open it up without losing the oversight that made closed-loop fleet cards useful in the first place.

That is where Visa Fleet 2.0⁵ is relevant. The scheme provides the rails for open-loop fleet payment, together with the transaction-level detail (what was bought, in what quantity, at what price) that fleet partners need for reporting, VAT reclaim and fraud control.

On top of those rails, partners can still put service controls, spend limits, product-level restrictions and real-time reporting around the card. The result: broader acceptance where it is available, with the discipline of a closed-loop setup kept intact where it matters.

Reach and acceptance will keep varying across countries and services. That is the honest picture. But the direction is clear: fewer standalone cards, more consolidated payment behaviour, more partner control over the end-user experience.

What this means for partners

What the shift looks like in practice depends on where a partner sits in the market.

Fuel retailers

Fuel cards built around diesel and single-brand networks are losing ground as fleets electrify and expand their service needs. The shift is a chance to extend customer relationships beyond fuel, without giving up the brand that built the customer base.

Leasing companies

Leasing contracts today typically route fuel and charging through a third-party card provider. That leaves commercial value sitting outside the lease. Adding vehicle services inside the lease contract brings it back in, without having to build and operate the payment infrastructure.

EV charging platforms

Home-network coverage is strong, but drivers increasingly need acceptance beyond it. Open-loop payment turns charging into a broader fleet business, without rebuilding issuer and compliance stacks from scratch.

Parking operators

Fleet customers are consolidating onto fewer cards, which puts pressure on parking-only setups. Expanding beyond the existing parking network with EMV acceptance keeps parking operators part of that consolidated setup.

In each case, the partner keeps the brand, the customer relationship and the pricing. The payment layer sits behind, not in front.

Where XXImo fits

XXImo is the fleet payment engine behind partners’ products, not the product itself. We provide the regulated infrastructure, the Visa Fleet 2.0 rails, the card issuing, the Partner Portal and the branded end-user app. Partners build on top: their brand, their pricing, their customer base.

Fifteen years of work in fleet payment sit in that stack now, available as a foundation rather than something each partner has to assemble themselves.

A regulated base, built for speed

We hold an EMI licence from De Nederlandsche Bank, are a Visa Principal Member, are PCI-DSS certified and are certified for Visa Fleet 2.0. With a payment solution specifically designed for fleet use and established onboarding processes, we can offer partners a streamlined way to onboard their customers.

This allows partners to bring their fleet payment solutions to market without building a payment stack from scratch, while retaining control over their own offering.

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Sources

¹ Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR), (EU) 2023/1804, European Commission. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1804/oj/eng

² Payment Services Directive 3 (PSD3), European Commission (https://finance.ec.europa.eu/regulation-and-supervision/financial-services-legislation/implementing-and-delegated-acts/payment-services-directive_en); NIS2 Directive (EU) 2022/2555, EUR-Lex (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2022/2555).

³ Zero-emission zones for commercial vehicles, Rijksoverheid. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/klimaatverandering/nieuws/2025/03/14/gemeenten-brancheorganisaties-en-ministerie-maken-afspraken-over-zero-emissiezones

⁴ RVO, Stand van zaken elektrisch vervoer. https://www.rvo.nl/onderwerpen/elektrisch-rijden/cijfers

⁵ Visa Fleet & Mobility ecosystem launch, Visa Corporate. https://corporate.visa.com/en/sites/visa-perspectives/innovation/visa-launches-fleet-and-mobility-ecosystem.html

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