Senior Staff AI Platform Engineer

WEX & Mastercard launch APAC fleet payments network. Mon, 12th Oct 2026 (Today) WEX and Mastercard have formed a strategic partnership to launch a unified fleet payments network across Asia Pacific, including Australia as part of a regional rollout. The network is designed to combine fuel, vehicle maintenance, tolling and parking payments into a single system for fleet operators in a market where annual fleet-card transaction volumes are estimated at about USD $310 billion, or AUD $435 billion. The companies describe it as the first unified fleet payments network of its kind in Asia Pacific and expect it to handle billions of dollars in annual transactions as it expands across key markets in the region. Fleet operators in Asia Pacific often manage spending across separate payment systems, with fuel, maintenance, tolls and parking billed through different channels. As a result, fleet managers can be left reconciling multiple accounts and dealing with fragmented data. Regional growth The deal comes as Asia Pacific becomes the fastest-growing fleet management region globally, according to figures cited by the companies. The region accounted for 31% of global fleet-card transaction volumes in 2025 and is projected to grow 14.3% a year through 2030, they said. The partnership combines Mastercard's global payments network with WEX's fleet management business. Mastercard processed 175 billion transactions in 2025, while WEX processed more than USD $237 billion in total volume across its global commerce platform in the same year, according to the companies. WEX said the new network is intended to give fleet managers a consolidated view of traditional vehicle costs and broader business spending. It also includes spend controls, line-item reporting and support for businesses operating mixed fleets of conventional, hybrid and electric vehicles. Matt Arthur, Vice President and General Manager, APAC Mobility at WEX, said the company is seeing demand for simpler payment structures as fleet businesses face operational change and cost pressure. "In 2026, the competitive advantage for fleets is found in simplicity. WEX is already a global pioneer in travel and corporate virtual payments; by joining forces with Mastercard in this new capacity, we are bringing that same engine of innovation to the APAC mobility sector," Arthur said. "For decades, fleets have used one card for fuel and a patchwork of systems for everything else, leaving fleet managers to stitch it all together. This strategic partnership creates a smarter infrastructure that allows our customers to manage the transition to hybrid fleets and navigate economic volatility with total visibility over their operations," he said. Single account Under the proposed structure, businesses could manage fuel, maintenance, tolling, and parking through one account and receive a consolidated invoice. The companies said the approach is intended to reduce administrative work and improve oversight of vehicle-related spending. Mastercard presented the agreement as part of its push into commercial payments and transport-related transaction flows in the region. Transport remains central to the movement of people and goods across Asia Pacific, where market conditions and operating environments vary widely between countries, it said. "Transportation is a critical growth engine. It sits at the center of how people and goods move, especially in a diverse region like Asia-Pacific," said Anouska Ladds, Executive Vice President, Commercial and New Payment Flows, Asia Pacific, Mastercard. "Our collaboration with WEX is an essential example of how we scale with impact. By combining our global network with their deep industry expertise, we're helping businesses move faster, operate smarter and prepare for what's next. Together, we're setting a new standard for a future-ready mobility ecosystem," Ladds said. The partnership also extends a longer commercial relationship between the two companies. WEX said it holds the largest global share by volume in virtual card travel payments and accounts for half of all virtual card payments in the travel sector.

B2B Payments already have the controls AI agents need. By PYMNTS | October 8, 2026 Every swipe, ACH transfer or virtual card transaction carries clues about who is spending, where money is moving, what is being bought and whether something looks wrong. Those clues have remained relatively untapped, and not for lack of enterprise effort. "The core problem is work happens in one place, and payments happen in another. People are stitching that together manually, which can create delays and errors as volume grows," Ryan Taylor, SVP Product Management - Mobility & Payments at WEX, told PYMNTS during a discussion for the PYMNTS B2B Payments Event 2026 - Stopping B2B Fraud Before AI Moves the Money. Artificial intelligence, Taylor said, could eliminate some of that stitching. But the bigger opportunity is to collapse the distance between detecting what should happen and safely executing it. After all, AI systems are getting better at determining which invoice looks suspicious, where a fleet vehicle should refuel, whether a supplier price is drifting higher and which transaction deserves intervention. But identifying the right action is different from having the authority to take it, particularly when taking it means moving real corporate cash. And that could just end up turning payments from the endpoint of an enterprise workflow into its control plane. "Payment data is interesting because it really is the digital footprint of business," Taylor said. "It tells you more than just what was spent. It can tell you about what was happening in the business at that exact moment that a payment occurred." AI can make the decision; payments will decide whether it can act. The next bottleneck for enterprise AI is shaping up around permission, not intelligence. And payment infrastructure can provide something models cannot generate themselves: enforceable boundaries around what an AI system is actually allowed to do. Knowing that a driver spent $100 on fuel is accounting data. Combining the card swipe with the vehicle's location, fuel level, route and historical behavior creates operational context. An AI system can potentially determine whether the purchase is legitimate, whether the amount makes sense and whether the driver could have fueled more cheaply elsewhere. Taylor argued that effective artificial intelligence systems therefore require three elements: context, controls and clarity. He compared the process with onboarding an employee. Please add us to your preferred sources list so our news, data and interviews show up in your feed. Thanks! "You need to give them context. You need to put them in the right control environment so they can learn and grow, but not do harm. And then they also need clarity. They need to know what success looks like," Taylor said. The enterprise AI race, as a result, could eventually become partly an identity-and-permissions race: Which agent is acting? On whose behalf? What authority has it been delegated? Which counterparties can it transact with? How much can it spend? When does it need human approval? The virtual card takes on a new role in an agentic landscape. Virtual cards can already restrict merchant, amount, timing and number of transactions. In an agentic environment, those features effectively become programmable permissions for machines. "One of the main reasons virtual cards are so compelling as we look towards an agentic future is that controls are built directly into the payments themselves," Taylor said. "We don't want to give the agents open-ended access to our corporate bank accounts. We need to govern how and when they can execute payments, and how money is actually moving to manage the risk exposure." That ultimately suggests the future enterprise payments stack could function less like plumbing and more like an API for financial authority. An agent might determine that an invoice should be paid. Payment infrastructure determines whether it can pay it. That division of labor could also change how companies measure AI's financial value. The obvious efficiency case is fewer manual tasks across areas like invoice matching and reconciliation, where finance teams can automate work and redirect employees toward higher-value activities. The deeper opportunity is moving financial controls upstream. Much of corporate finance has operated retrospectively, but AI paired with real-time payment data can move controls around exceptions, fraud, and variance closer to the moment when money changes hands. Taylor describes the shift as "shrinking the distance between this insight to action." "The organizations that get the most out of AI won't be the ones that add chatbots to legacy systems," he said. "They're the ones who are going to treat payments as a core infrastructure." * Why AI's next payments bottleneck isn't intelligence. It's permission.Taylor says AI can increasingly identify what should happen next, but enterprises still need hard limits around what machines can actually do with corporate money - turning payments into the control layer between AI decisions and financial action. * Why the virtual card could become the wallet for enterprise AI.Taylor says virtual cards can restrict who gets paid, when, where and how much, giving AI agents the ability to execute transactions without giving them "open-ended access to our corporate bank accounts." * Why AI could move finance from catching mistakes to stopping them.Taylor says combining payments with operational data can shrink the distance between "insight to action," letting businesses detect fraud, invoice discrepancies and inefficient spending before money moves instead of finding problems during reconciliation. Ryan Taylor is senior vice president of Product Management, Mobility & Payments at WEX.

WEX launches Verified Vendors, connecting customers to OTR solutions. Home > business - truck driving job news > WEX launches Verified Vendors, connecting customers to OTR solutions. Reading Time: 2 minutes PORTLAND, Maine - WEX is launching Verified Vendors, a new resource that helps over-the-road (OTR) customers discover and connect with vetted third-party providers offering products and services to help them operate and grow their businesses. "Verified Vendors gives our customers a faster, more trusted way to find the third-party services that matter most to their business," said Tim Hampton, senior vice president and general manager for OTR at WEX. "Instead of navigating a fragmented market on their own, carriers and owner-operators can start their search from a curated set of providers WEX brings together in one convenient location. It's a natural extension of how WEX supports customers beyond our own products." Verified Vendors. Through Verified Vendors, WEX OTR customers can explore curated partner offerings and connect with providers through a streamlined referral experience all in one place. According to WEX, third-party value-added services, from equipment financing and toll reconciliation to hotel booking and navigation, are essential for managing and expanding OTR trucking operations, but finding and accessing vetted providers is fragmented and time-consuming. The Verified Vendors program is designed to close that gap by giving customers a centralized place to learn about relevant solutions and understand their benefits and eligibility before connecting with a provider. * BestPass - Toll transponders * Engine - Hotel and travel reservations * MapUp - Toll reconciliation * TFS Financial - Equipment financing * TruckerPath - Navigation * SCI - Terminal Hardware and Software Program expansion. Customers can access Verified Vendors at no cost and submit requests to connect with participating providers directly through the WEX platform. The vendor lineup is expected to grow over time as WEX continues to add providers based on customer needs and program performance. "Driven by mutual trust, the joint effort between SCI and WEX enhances market penetration while ensuring maximum customer satisfaction and retention," said Tal Ezra, CEO at SCI. "Fleet managers and drivers get one card, one system and one clear picture of their fuel, and Verified Vendors makes it easier than ever to get there. It's a great step forward for everyone involved." A trusted resource. According to WEX, for fleets and owner-operators, that means less time spent independently researching vendors and more confidence in knowing where to start. For WEX, Verified Vendors creates a scalable way to deepen its relationships with industry providers and extend its role as a trusted resource for carriers across the industry. "Fleets should know what every trip costs and have the tools to protect their margins," said Brad Alt, head of sales for MapUp. "Our partnership with WEX brings that vision to life across MapUp's platform; from route planning, fuel optimization, driver navigation, to GPS-based real-time toll billing and auditing, helping them decide where to fuel, guide drivers on the road, recover costs faster and catch overcharge. As more fleets turn to us to connect these workflows, WEX's Verified Vendors portal makes it easier to access the right capabilities through a relationship they already trust, with one shared goal: making every trip more predictable and profitable." WEX OTR customers can begin exploring Verified Vendors today by reaching out to their WEX sales representative or by clicking here. The launch of Verified Vendors comes on the heel of its recent announcement regarding the launch of cardless fuel payments for OTR customers. Dana Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has been featured in multiple newspapers, books and magazines across the globe. She is currently based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.