‘To offer one card in your wallet with many wallets in your card’
Now there is an alternative to dedicated, limited use fuel cards. A card you also can use anywhere. Airmax Scope™, part of the Airmax Group, launches its Prepaid Corporate MasterCard® that works like a branded fuel or fuel bunker card – but only when it needs to.
Market maturity has led to users increasingly expecting more from fuel cards than discount or preset pricing, with the demand for service, savings and security leading to the appearance of dedicated account and expense management and a real-time web portal.
Typically, the majority of businesses using fuel cards are those which use their vehicles as a place of work and rely heavily on motor vehicles on a day-to-day basis. One of the primary reasons a business will use a fuel card is to obtain significant savings both on the ‘price at the pump’ and on administrative costs. Airmax’s Scope real-time reporting is a new alternative to traditional monthly account management and the limited customer benefits that generally attach to that concept. Transactions are visible in real-time giving complete instant access to fuel and other expenditure.
The launch incorporates other services from Airmax Scope to offer telecoms management and Corporate Rewards. It is anticipated that the Scope Card will appeal to fleet users as it combines normal card transactions and fuel on one card. Participating fuel card brands can have the transactions routed on one card in what has become known euphemistically as both open and closed loop transactions. Buying fuel from garages participating in fuel bunkering or set pricing can now be done on one card.
The ‘Scope’ Business Card offers companies and their employees an alternative way to manage business-related payments. Unlike credit or charge cards, prepaid cards areavailable to everyone – so now employees and employers can benefit from the efficiencies and ultimate savings of prepaid card payments.
The Scope card has specific features that enable them to be managed centrally. Plus, by specifying purchasing restrictions or spending limits you can also tailor the cards you give your employees. The system offers a management suite to enable the discerning user to issue and predetermine the use of the cards. Merchants Sectors and cash from ATM’s can, if needed, be blocked and expenditure contained. The Scope Prepaid MasterCard enables far higher levels of financial control and accountability. With its online detailed itemisation of workforce spending together with customer configurable usage parameters which allow employee work profiles to determine the level of money and the transaction limit held on the Scope Prepaid MasterCard combined with the range and type of outlet where transactions are allowed. Typically the card will replace cash, personal cheques and credit cards and reimbursement scheme transactions used for fuel, hotels, restaurants and general work incurred expenses. Provided the main client account remains ‘in funds’ then cash levels on the card are automatically topped up at pre-set times throughout the day. Cash withdrawal is not enabled at this stage. As explained by Darshan Amin, Airmax Scope Director, ‘The Scope Prepaid MasterCard is a new payment tool suitable for all UK registered businesses, irrespective of size or credit history. The Scope Card incorporates flexible business rules providing businesses with enhanced financial control across workforce spending. Subsequently, the card can easily be incorporated into almost any existing systems to improve fuel, fleet and general internal financial management, reporting and analysis. Designed from the outset on a modular basis, the card integrates with existing systems to provide added value web and data services, including vehicle telematics services’ and employee expense management.
Businesses diligence is increasing when it comes to saving operating costs. They are constantly looking at convenient payment methods as the pace of business becomes more challenging. It is very difficult to ‘cut fixed costs’ (oxymoron) unless you accept change and new task management and efficiency concepts.
Most often, fuel cards are used by fleets to improve efficiency by replacing paper-based business processes and offering purchasing reports. Fuel cards are also a convenient way of tracking individual fuel usage and subsequent VAT. More recently companies are adopting prepaid card solutions as they offer back office micro billing, real-time audit trail and a plethora of benefits. Accounts payable is not just about credit control and credit status though. Things have moved on.
Just imagine an intelligent prepaid MasterCard that has embedded within it several virtual cards but on one platform. This can take the form of an open loop and closed loop card in one thus behaving like a normal MasterCard at one level but with fuel transactions completed via a separate transaction process. This can be confined to a participating garage brand or a fuel bunkering facility. The user thus benefits from itemised billing as a result, together with the advantage of purchase discounts and added value services and corporate rewards.
Lots of businesses strive for enhanced profitability, better customer service and product innovation. Scope MasterCard delivers all of the above by introducing new payment options that are both easy to use and more convenient, thereby increasing the levels of consumer acceptance, as well as creating the potential for new commercial partnerships among retailers, banks and other organisations.
Commercial prepaid programmes can offer a number of advantages to a company, its employees and customers.
Airmax Scope solutions help achieve these objectives by replacing costly, inefficient paper processes like cheque distribution and receipts, paper voucher printing and issuance, and recurring payment distribution. Airmax Scope solutions continue to allow necessary control and restrictions, without the inefficiencies of paper processing and accompanying procedures.
Summary of features:
- Designed to help businesses control the daily running expenses of vehicle fleets
- Designed to save money on fuel and supply dedicated reports
- Designed to restrict usage at high price garages and direct drivers to low cost fuel merchants – hypermarkets
- Basic credit card / debit card payment functionality plus:
- Driver or vehicle assigned cards
- Comprehensive data capture – per diems
- Comprehensive reporting suite
- Stand alone card application
- Always on-line to issuer
- Prompt for odometer and driver/vehicle ID at POS
- Purchase restrictions (fuel vs non-fuel)
- MCC and EPOS blocking
- Spend parameters as per purchasing card
- Real-time invoice transaction data from MasterCard
- Fraud or abuse alerts
- Full web-based transactional billing
- Fuel card substitute
- Garage details and locations
- Fuel usage analysis
- Transaction details; fuel type, price, date/time of transaction, registration number mileage prompt
Phil Gallagher, Airmax Group Ltd, Tel. +44(0)7825 150 863,
email: p.gallagher@airmaxgroup.com
Darshan Amin, Airmax Scope Ltd, email: info@airmaxgroup.com
MasterCard is a registered trademark of MasterCard International. The Airmax Scope Prepaid MasterCard is issued by Newcastle Building Society (“NBS”) pursuant to licence by MasterCard International Inc. NBS is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority as an issuer of e-money (registration no. 156058).
NBS subscribes to the Banking Code, copies of the Code are available upon request.
