AtoB, a fleet payments platform, is leveraging telematics and geolocation technology to give commercial transportation operators more insight into fuel purchasing habits and security.The San Francisco-based startup recently deployed apps and fuel cards capable of optimal station selection, telematics-based location tracking and fuel-level tracking.“We are effectively modernizing payments for the trucking and broader transportation industry, and when we say the word ‘modernizing,’ we are really trying to build things from the infrastructure level up,” Vignan Velivela, co-founder and CEO of AtoB, told FreightWaves. “We are building on a newer card network which has significantly better reliability.”AtoB was founded in 2020 by Velivela, Harshita Arora and Tushar Misra. The company’s payments platform provides a suite of tools for the trucking industry, including no-fee fleet cards, instant direct-deposit payroll, and access to bank accounts and savings tools.The user base for AtoB’s Visa fleet card includes over 30,000 fleets and 100,000 drivers, including owner-operators. The company is also seeing a growing market for fuel card users from rental car companies, as well as last-mile providers.Velivela said AtoB’s telematics offerings came after working with Visa, as well as partnering with some of the nation’s largest gas station and truck stop chains. The company also works with about 30 telematics providers to gather data from the cards.Telematics is a branch of IT that deals with the long-distance transmission of computerized information.“The approach we have taken is to make sure that the driver has a very seamless experience when they’re using a fuel card, while also making sure that all the reporting, all the analytics and any potential for fraud are checked in the background,” Velivela said. “We see this wealth of data we can get from the telematics of trucks in North America, whether you take a long-haul truck, or like some of the other commercial fleets in the regional space, they also use telematics devices.”Velivela said every time drivers use an AtoB fuel card, they can record things such as how much fuel is in the tank and how much should be authorized for the location of the vehicle.AtoB also has the ability to lock card usage until an authorized driver texts into the system, and geolocation tools that ensure drivers can only use AtoB cards if they are near their truck.“We have built this on a real-time payment model,” Velivela said

Smaller players in both the trucking industry and the truck stop industry are challenged to match the efficiencies of their larger competitors. Trucking companies with fleets of 20 or fewer vehicles can’t negotiate the same discounts as larger firms when it comes to their greatest expense — fuel — which accounts for 40% of their costs