BBC Panorama’s investigation into ’The Great British Fuel Robbery’ on Monday night strongly highlighted the plight of fleet business across the UK who are struggling with ever-rising fuel costs.

Disturbingly, a recent survey showed that last year 75 percent of business that declared insolvency during 2010/2011 cited fuel costs as the main reason. With fuel costs and taxes set to rise, this will surely only get worse.

The Fuelcard Company reported last month that, with fuel prices and taxes constantly rising, businesses are being forced to turn down work which results in the running of fewer fleets who are in turn employing less people.

Panorama suggested businesses are being forced to question their morality and weigh up keeping their business afloat against the implications of sourcing cheap, and mostly illegal, fuel.

The Fuelcard Company is reminding its customers about the legalities of using contraband fuel.  Red dye is for use only by farmers and building contractors for off-road vehicles. HM Customs has the right to stop and search any vehicle with those caught illegally using Red diesel liable for an on the spot £500 fine and possible confiscation of the vehicle.

Businesses, surely it’s not worth the risk?

One of the distinguishing features of fuel card against credit card is the limited fraud susceptibility of fuel cards. While security enhancement on cards is an ongoing process, we need to understand that a fuel card comes with something that offers a lot of satisfaction for the subscribers. This is because a fuel card does not divulge any of your banking details and hence isolates your banking details from the fuel card.

Since, fuel cards are a niche product that appeal to a niche-audience, it is easy to limit its exposure and hence reduce the chances of financial frauds. Unlike a credit card, which if stolen, can cause havoc in your life, a fuel card offers only the free fuel to the guy who stole it. So, professional card thieves do not have any kind of an incentive to steal a fuel card while a credit card offers them more inducement to do so.

Having said that, security of fuel card is controlled by the smartchip. We know that we can control fuel card dispensation by virtue of fuel type, vehicle identifier or driver identifier. And, this essentially means the fuel card is less prone to financial irregularities than other financial instruments.

Not stopping at the current security setup that is built-in the fuel cards, fuel suppliers are working overtime to adopt a real-time authentication for fuel transactions that are made with fuel cards. This is based on the PIN number. So, while getting the vehicle re-fuelled there is a real-time authorization of the PIN number. This, essentially, adds a 2nd leg of security to the fuel cards to ensure that all transactions go through PIN authentication, alongside the chip identification. BP and Esso have already implemented this in their fuel cards. Infact, BP has already implemented PIN on 400,000 cards. More suppliers are integrating PIN authorizations for fuel cards in the near future.

While the overall financial risks are already limited to misuse of fuel in the case of fuel cards rather than the entire credit line in the case of credit cards, PIN and chip will assist in settling the security apprehensions of folks who are committed to 100% security on financial instruments.