Archive for June 24th, 2011
All about Fuel Cards
Fuel cards have become almost common place for companies these days, but they haven’t always been around. The following is a brief history of the fuel card and how they came to be used for companies today.
It’s hard to say what the exact year was that fuel cards came into circulation, but in the 1970s and 1980s they started being used more and more. But the fuel cards they used in those days are quite different from the ones we use these days. Obviously those first fuel cards did not have any kind of electronic memory. They were mainly used by truckers, because the fuel cards were only accepted in a limited number of places.
The cards in those days had to be checked by matching signature that was on the card, and the registration of the vehicle. Later the cards were embossed. This was done because with printing the information would wear away with time and use and it was no longer legible.
In those first days, using a fuel card was not necessarily easier or faster. Because there was no electronic data, the transactions had to be recorded by means of manually stamping the card on to a transaction sheet. Other details like date and time had to be written by hand which was extremely time consuming.
In the late 1980s the fuel cards started being made with magnetic strips that could store information. This cut down on the number of human errors and helped it to become more efficient. They still cross checked the signatures but the rest of the information was now stored on the card.
The magnetic strips also helped the card information to be better protected as each card was given a pin encoded on the card. Of course it was still inferior to what we use today, but it was a definite step up.
As time went on the technology became more and more advanced and sophisticated. People began realizing the benefits of fuel cards, and their use began to increase.
Some of the protection on fuel cards these days includes 24/7 monitoring of all transactions and a capacity of over 10,000 transactions per second. This has reduced fraudulent transactions.
Getting the latest fuel card news is important if your company uses them, so make sure you check out the various websites available online for all the latest prices and other fuel card information.