How a fleet proposition keeps up as customers change

Picture a fuel partner whose biggest customer tells them, in the quarterly review, that 70% of their new vehicles next year will be electric. The fuel card they signed up for five years ago won’t disappear overnight. But the business behind that card has to change if the partner wants to still be part of that customer’s life in three years.

That is the question this article looks at. What does a fleet payment product need to be able to do, structurally, so it grows with its customers instead of being overtaken by them.

Three shifts changing what fleet customers look like

Electrification is accelerating, especially in commercial fleets

A large share of new light commercial vehicles sold in the Netherlands this year is electric.¹ For partners whose offerings were built around fuel cards and diesel-only fleets, each new vehicle a customer buys is one that doesn’t visit the pump the same way. Fuel share of fleet cost is falling, even in fleets that haven’t switched outright. The question stops being “how do we hold on to fuel volume” and starts being “how do we stay relevant when charging, parking and tolls take a larger share of our customer’s monthly spend.”

Fleet managers are actively looking to consolidate

Industry research keeps pointing to the same complaint from fleet managers: too many cards, too many apps, no clean invoice, VAT admin that eats hours a month. Consolidation isn’t a nice-to-have at this point. It’s an active procurement question in many fleets. The partner who can bring that together in one offer is in a strong position. The partner who can’t tends to lose ground over time.

Customers cross borders

A customer whose drivers fuel up in Belgium or charge in Germany expects the same card to work there. For partners, that starts as an acceptance question. Local card issuance in every market is a separate and harder step, still limited across the industry today. Growing with a customer means supporting them where they drive, usually from a card issued at home.

What “growing with the customer” means for the product

A product that grows isn’t a bigger version of a smaller product. It’s one built so its components can be reconfigured without rebuilding the whole thing.

Three things decide whether that’s possible.

1. ‍ Services sit on one base, not one per silo: if adding EV charging requires a separate card, a separate app and a separate contract, the product hasn’t grown. It has fragmented. A base that supports fuel, charging, parking, car wash and tolls on the same card is what lets a partner add services as a customer needs them.
2. Controls are configurable per customer: different customers have different rules. A logistics operator wants strict product rules and high daily volumes. A knowledge-worker business wants broad freedom with light checks. A leasing customer wants vehicle-level discipline. A product that grows is one where these controls can be set differently per customer, without changes to the underlying infrastructure.
3. Data that grows with the offering: partners growing their offering into new services need data that stays consistent across those services. Within connected acceptance networks, structured transaction data is already available through system-level integrations. Visa Fleet 2.0 is set to broaden that to the scheme level, though wide adoption by merchants and acquirers will take time.³

What stays the same (and should)

The partner’s relationship with the customer stays the partner’s. The brand stays the partner’s. The pricing stays the partner’s. The service-level conversations stay the partner’s.

What changes behind that is where the payment stack earns its keep. The infrastructure, the compliance, the acceptance networks, the rails. These are the layers that have to grow in reach as XXImo expands into new markets, and in scope as more services get added.

Where XXImo fits

XXImo provides the infrastructure that lets partners build on one base and reconfigure as their customers change. Fuel, EV charging, parking, car wash and tolls on the same card. Configurable controls per customer, per vehicle, per driver. Visa rails for payment, structured transaction data within connected acceptance networks. A regulated base (EMI licence from De Nederlandsche Bank, Visa Principal Member, PCI DSS certified) built for the European markets XXImo supports today, with the roadmap to add more.

The partner keeps the brand, the pricing and the customer. XXImo keeps the stack working underneath, growing it as the customer base changes.

Talk to an expert

Sources

¹ RVO, Stand van zaken elektrisch vervoer. https://www.rvo.nl/onderwerpen/elektrisch-rijden/cijfers

² 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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