Fuel Card Fraud

While fuel cards take away a lot of headaches, some small business owners are worried about fuel card fraud. 

In reality, fuel cards are safer for your business than debit or credit cards, as they are technologically fraud proof. It’s only human misuse that could potentially lead to any fraud. 

Read on to find out how fuel cards keep your company money safe, and learn how to make fuel card fraud within your business impossible.

Firstly, what are fuel cards? 

With fuel cards, your employees can make payments when they fill up with petrol or diesel, and your business receives an itemised invoice to pay afterwards. This means you driver expenses claims for fuel are done for you automatically, and logging receipts to reclaim for VAT on your business fuel also becomes a thing of the past. 

Branded fuel cards are available from each of the leading global energy companies, plus a wealth of multi-brand options that let your employees fill up at numerous chains of filling stations or even supermarkets, always paying with the same card.

What security features prevent fuel card fraud? 

We at iCompario have never heard of a case of fuel cards being cloned the way credit or debit cards sometimes are. We believe this makes them more secure than bank cards.

PIN protection

Fuel cards are PIN protected. This is your first layer of protection, as a lost fuel card cannot be used. 

See all the details of every fuel card purchase online

In your online account, you get nearly real-time data on every purchase made with each of your fuel cards. You will already know that you don’t get this detail with a credit or debit card, making fuel cards the more secure choice to detect and tackle misuse. 

Your fuel card account will itemise every transaction, detailing which card was used, the location, time, date, litres and type of fuel purchased and the amount spent. 

Photo ID request

Many fuel card providers help you tackle fraud with the optional feature of adding an ID request to fuel cards. With this activated, the cashier at the filling station will only accept the card if they are shown a specific photo ID. 

Personalise your fuel card security settings

Some fuel card providers also let you choose your own fuel card security settings. In your online account you can set the maximum spend in 24 hours or a week, maximum spend per transaction, and even choose time limits so that the card doesn’t work outside regular working hours. You can vary the settings from one card to another. 

Once you have set these parameters, you can opt for instant email or app alerts if any attempt is made to use the card outside the limits you have set.

We can help you find fuel cards with free security alerts 

iCompario can help you find fuel cards with this special functionality to protect your business against fuel card fraud. Just give us a few details about your business in a 30-second form, and we’ll take care of the rest.

What types of fuel card fraud do happen? 

Now we have clarified that fuel card fraud is difficult, let’s look at how it could happen. Essentially this boils down to employees using their company fuel card to fill their own car for personal use, or “lending” their card to another person to fill up their vehicle. 

You could find this out by seeing in your online account that one driver was using a lot more fuel than the others, or that some drivers were using a lot of fuel relative to their work mileage. Many companies tackle fraudulent employees in this way.

How to make fuel card fraud impossible

If you manage a lot of drivers, don’t know some of them very well, or have had a fraud problem in the past, you may be looking for a way to make fuel card fraud literally impossible. 

How can you make sure your fuel cards are only used to fill up your company’s vehicles? A simple GPS vehicle tracking locator in your vans or cars can tell you where any vehicle was at the time the relevant driver’s fuel card was used. In your online account you can see at a glance if they tally or not. The subscription for this GPS vehicle tracking service costs just a few pounds a month. 

There is one low-cost provider which gives you real-time data fully integrated in your fuel card online account, and even offers automatic alerts by email or in your mobile app. With other providers you can download a compatible file and compare the data yourself.

We can help you get started

iCompario can help you choose a vehicle tracking system to make sure fuel card fraud in your company is absolutely impossible. Just give us a few details about your business in a 30-second form, and we’ll take care of the rest.