7 benefits of the Geotab Fleet Card

Most fleets using Geotab already have a fuel card, but many are not connected to their vehicles’ telematics data. That disconnect can cost fleets up to 15% of their annual fuel spend through a combination of fraud, slippage, and inefficient fueling. When fraud occurs, the finance team only discovers it weeks later, when the statement arrives, and the money has already left the company account. The fleet manager lacks real-time visibility and control over what drivers are spending, and manual reconciliation between the fuel statements and fleet and finance systems takes valuable administrative time and doesn’t always surface all the losses.

Connecting payment cards with live vehicle data closes the gap. This post explores the seven practical benefits for fleet and finance teams.

What are the benefits of Geotab’s telematics-based fuel payment system?

For fleets already using telematics, connecting fuel card payments with live vehicle data creates benefits across both day-to-day operations and financial management. These range from transaction security and spend controls to fuel cost savings, reporting and simpler administration.

One platform for operations and finance

The Geotab Fleet Card embeds fuel spend management directly inside MyGeotab, giving you a single platform to manage both fleet operations and finance, with no extra logins, no separate portals, and no more reconciliation spreadsheets or toggling between portals.

Spend controls, transaction review, IFTA reporting and card management are all available alongside the operational, compliance and safety data you already run your fleet on, with no new platform for your team to learn.

Real-time spend visibility by driver, vehicle, and card

Every fuel transaction appears in MyGeotab as it happens, so fleet managers can actively review approved, pending and declined transactions, and analyze spend by driver, vehicle or card without waiting for the statement to arrive.

The finance director can log into MyGeotab to gain accurate, real-time visibility into fleet financial performance, and their team’s administrative workload reduces, with less time spent reconciling statements and reactively investigating potential fraudulent transactions.

Fraud prevention before it clears

The Geotab Fleet Card can help block six recurring types of fuel fraud before payment is authorized.

The fuel card remains locked by default until it’s manually unlocked by the assigned driver in the Geotab Drive app. This prevents unauthorized purchases from card skimming, lost, or stolen cards, since the card is worthless to anyone without the vehicle and the app.

Dynamic authorization checks the vehicle’s live location against the merchant’s coordinates, blocking any attempted transaction made on the card when the vehicle isn’t at the fuel station. Live tank-level data is used to decline a purchase if the tank doesn’t have room for the fuel, preventing harder-to-spot forms of fraud such as buddy fueling, where the fleet vehicle is filled and then a second vehicle gets fuel on the same transaction.

Granular spend controls

Beyond dynamic payment authorization, fleet managers can gain even greater control by setting spend policies in MyGeotab by category, merchant, or dollar limit. These rules are enforced at the point of sale, before the transaction is processed.

Spend rules can also be set by timeframe, allowing administrators to define exactly when fuel can be purchased, down to the individual vehicle level. This can be particularly valuable for preventing off-shift fueling when shift start and end times are well-defined.

Wholesale fuel discounts at 4,200+ locations

The Geotab Fleet Card provides access to in-network fuel discounts averaging 42¢ per gallon across 4,200+ high-flow diesel truck stops, with savings of up to $2.00 per gallon at select locations, alongside 5¢ -20¢ per gallon savings across 30,000+ local gas stations.

Drivers can use the Geotab Drive app to find the nearest in-network fuel station, with live pricing information to help them find the cheapest fuel on their route.

IFTA reporting built in

For fleets with vehicles that regularly pass through different jurisdictions, everything needed to complete your quarterly fuel tax report for International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) compliance already lives in MyGeotab. Data including miles driven, fuel purchase location, fuel type, volume, price and fuel tax paid can be filtered by participating state or province, showing eligible transactions and gallons by jurisdiction, without needing to manually pull data from a separate fuel card portal.

$250K fraud guarantee

With the Geotab Fleet Card, eligible accounts* receive up to $250,000 in fraud protection that backs all telematics-verified transactions. This provides finance directors with peace of mind and matches the industry’s highest published standard, with zero monthly card fees.

Connect vehicle data and fuel payments with the Geotab Fleet Card

Historically, fuel spend has been one of the hardest operational costs to control, but that all changes with the Geotab Fleet Card, as reactive management and reconciliation are replaced with proactive fraud prevention and real-time visibility into every dollar spent.

If you’re already a Geotab customer, the vehicle data needed to manage fuel spend more intelligently is already in MyGeotab. Connecting it with the Geotab Fleet Card brings fuel control and reporting together with your operational data in one familiar environment, with no additional logins and no separate portals to move between.

If you’re not yet a Geotab customer, Geotab Fleet Card’s dynamic payment authorization helps prevent fraudulent or out-of-policy transactions before the money is spent. Combined with fuel network savings and tighter spend controls, it can help you reduce preventable losses and get better value on every gallon purchased.

See how the Geotab Fleet Card could benefit your fleet

*The Fraud Guarantee is available to AtoB Premium customers with either (i) a credit account, or (ii) a qualifying prepaid account with established usage history (the account has been open and actively used for at least 60 days (regular monthly activity beyond monthly fees) and has at least $5,000 in annual account usage). For a transaction to be covered by the Fraud Guarantee, the card used in a transaction must have all of the following in place: (a) Card Unlock Security enabled; (b) Block Transactions with Telematics enabled; and (c) assignment to a vehicle equipped with telematics. The account must also be in good standing (no failed payments in the last 8 weeks) and in full compliance with the AtoB Platform Agreement.