Fuelcard giant Allstar is gearing up for the rollout of chip and pin technology for its fuelcards.
The UK’s leading supplier has been running a pilot scheme for the past two months with “a couple of dozen suppliers”, according to Allstar parent Fleetcor’s UK marketing vice-president Dave Mathews, who claimed customers had found transactions were “a lot faster at point of sale”, as well as the new technology enabling the use of self-service pumps.
Cards will begin distribution to customers from December, but it will take two years to replace all cards, with the firm prioritising those on the normal replacement cycle to save fleets having to distribute large numbers of cards more times than is necessary. The bulk, however, will be in the next 12 months.
The move has been delayed from its original timeframe of April 2014 to ensure all filling stations and fuel suppliers were able to accept the new technology. “We needed to be certain stations could accept it and it wouldn’t glitch with their systems as so many different stations were having to upgrade systems,” said Mathews.