The CRT Playbook: Great Tech, Wrong Segment? (1)
- Nick Pannell
- Nov 25, 2025
- 6 min read
About the series 'The CRT Playbook'
Commercial road transport isn’t corporate fleet, but most innovation in mobility payments still treats it that way. In a sector defined by long routes, high exposure, thin margins, and real operational risk, “more convenience” isn’t a strategy. Control is.
That’s why The CRT Playbook exists. In this series, we cut through the noise to examine the technologies, behaviours, and market dynamics that actually shape the CRT ecosystem. From fraud and fuel leakage to tokenisation, telematics, data reconciliation, and the road to a truly cardless future.
Every chapter builds on the last. Welcome to Chapter 1 of our CRT Playbook.
Stay tuned for Chapter 2.
Why Commercial Road Transport Needs Its Own Playbook
There’s never been more innovation flying into mobility payments: in-app authorisation, tokenisation, dynamic controls, real-time data feeds, machine learning — the list grows by the week. Great, isn’t it?
Take a step back, though, and you may notice a pattern. It can look like fintechs, payment service providers and transaction processors (plus many others) are – at times – innovating for innovation’s sake. Basically, because they can.
A “neat app” isn’t a strategy.
That may give us a vibrant tech scene in mobility – but how far does current innovation really go in soothing the specific headaches of operators in each segment? If new features are engineered for the average use case and then pushed into every corner of the market, then don’t they all end up missing the mark a bit?
As far as commercial road transport (CRT) is concerned – that seems to be very much the case.
Balancing Control & Convenience
Any B2B mobility proposition has to blend convenience and control benefits.
But here’s the thing: that blend has got to look different for different segments. As an industry, we’ve become a little bit obsessed with corporate fleet and the (apparently) sexier challenges of electrification, open loop migration and expense management. Making everything ultra convenient for companies for whom vehicles, drivers and driving are not particularly critical.
The card itself is the problem.
You just can’t apply the same logic to commercial transport. Drivers and fuel are – between them – by far the biggest cost components. The CRT business is vehicles, drivers and driving. Fraud and “unauthorised expenditure” are very real. Typically, CRT fleet managers don’t give a stuff about the driver’s convenience.
They need to ensure drivers do exactly what they are told to do, at exactly the right place and at exactly the right time. Because if they don’t, the costs can wipe out margin in an instant.
CRT is – in many ways then – the polar opposite of corporate car fleet. It’s international by definition (and getting more so), high-ticket, 24/7, and ruthlessly operational. Drivers don’t park outside an office and go home at night – they live on multi-country routes, away from base for three or four weeks at a time – negotiating tolls, fuel stops, security threats, and time windows. Fraud incentives are higher, credit exposure runs larger, and every extra minute at a pump compounds cost.
A “neat app” isn’t a strategy. A convenience play – however smart the tech – just doesn’t cut it.
What Makes CRT Different (and Why It Matters)
Risk density: A single refuel on a tractor-trailer dwarfs a typical corporate fill—so the payoff for fraud is bigger, and controls must be tougher and closer to the transaction.
Variance (or “leakage”) cost: Pay for fuel at an issuer’s gleaming motorway truckstop instead of its economy unmanned site on the edge of an industrial estate, and that’ll wipe out any negotiated discount – and more.
Route reality: Multi-network, cross-border behaviour is the norm; solutions must ride along where the truck actually goes, not just where the issuer wishes it did.
Edge constraints: Connectivity, language, device policy, and driver changeovers mean UX has to be simple, offline-tolerant, and fast at the terminal.
Data usefulness: Telematics and POS data are only valuable if they reconcile to the same physical event—this vehicle, this pump, this volume, now.
“Making a Fuel Card Do More” – Really???
So let’s go back to where we started: tech and innovation….
Much (if not all) of the new stuff being developed by issuers for commercial transport is basically adding muscle to a fuel card. Making it pay for more stuff. Integrating more services so that – yes, you’ve guessed it – it’s more convenient.
Surely – in the high exposure, fraud-littered, margin-sensitive world we’ve just described – sending drivers on 3-4 week international trips with rectangular pieces of losable, lendable, cloneable, abusable, skimmable plastic in the cab (sometimes 5 or 6 of them for different countries, networks and services) is utter lunacy.
The card itself is the problem. And the more it gets beefed up and made “more convenient”, the more of a problem it is.
The fastest way to segment-fit is to partner where CRT already lives.
The good news? There’s a smarter way to take control without losing continuity.
Instead of forcing decades-old card logic into a digital wrapper, some providers have flipped the model entirely — moving authorisation from the cab to the cloud.
This is where cardless payment enters the picture: not as a gimmick, but as a control-first architecture built for the realities of CRT.
So have we seen any examples of technology working towards a real 21st century commercial transport solution? Here’s one….
Cardless Authorisation: a Control Play That Fits CRT
One approach built for the edge is cardless, code-based authorisation—a one-time code-based flow where a driver presents a short code at the pump, valid for a limited window and governed by pre-set limits (products, volumes, sites). That keeps the high-risk artefacts (plastic+PIN) out of circulation and moves control into the back office—before the nozzle lifts. Market implementations show it can be simple for drivers and quick to deploy at the terminal, with options to evolve into tokenised virtual card data at authorisation so issuers keep their existing back-office processes untouched.
Yet these patterns aren’t theoretical. Code-based systems have processed millions of transactions with live, traceable, per-truck controls and cloud-side safeguards, and can be combined with or replace plastic cards, providing a pragmatic bridge rather than a rip-and-replace.
Fraud, Credit, and Live Controls (Rules at the Edge)
CRT issuers and networks don’t just need data later; they need rules now: which vehicle can buy which product, where, how much, and how often. Digital authorisation layers tied to a per-driver/per-vehicle identity make these limits enforceable in real time, with transaction metadata that reconciles from POS to back office to fleet systems. Done right, you cut administrative cost, shrink fraud windows, and create the audit trail CRT finance teams have been begging for.
Partnerships That Actually Unlock Scale
The fastest way to segment-fit is to partner where CRT already lives:
Terminals & switches: minimise on-site change by converting a short code into virtual Track-2 data either at the terminal or centrally at the switch, so the rest of the stack behaves like a standard card transaction. That gives multi-issuer neutrality and keeps cutovers, settlement, and reconciliation intact.
Telematics & tolls: combine payment authorisation with telematics signals (location, tank level) and OBU/toll data to bind “litres bought” to “litres in tank,” closing the loop between purchase and physical reality.
The pieces are already on the board — terminals that can read short codes, switches ready for virtual Track-2, telematics partners closing the data loop.
What’s missing is coordination.
Over the next few months, the most forward-thinking issuers and networks will pilot these links: site-side conversions, switch integrations, and joint data trials. Each step will move the CRT sector closer to a truly fraud-proof, interoperable model.
It’s About Control
CRT doesn’t need more generic innovation. It needs segment-fit: controls at the edge, continuity in the core, and partnerships that mirror how trucks actually run.
Ready to rethink CRT?
If there’s one thing the CRT market proves, it’s that doing “more of the same” stops working fast. Costs rise. Fraud adapts. Margins tighten. And the old playbook — plastic cards, patchwork controls, and endless admin — simply can’t keep up.
If you’re ready to explore what better looks like, we’re already deep in the details.
Get in touch with PHC Mobility and let’s map out your next move.
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