Fleet Cards: Clara Launches Solution for Fleet and Fuel Payment Management

Mexico City, September 2024 - Companies across industries face a common challenge: managing fuel expenses for every employee who is out of the office, visiting clients, transporting goods or prospecting. Traditionally, options for managing this cost include asking employees to pay and request reimbursement, or issuing prepaid cards, which are often difficult to administer, create extra costs and lead to inefficient management of company liquidity. With these needs in mind, Clara, the leading solution for companies to make and manage their payments, is taking another step toward becoming the most complete ecosystem in its segment with the launch of a payment card solution focused on fleet management and fuel payments.

The solution, which aims to bring greater operational efficiency and budget control, offers cards that can only be used for fuel purchases, along with control tools that improve expense management and provide detailed information about operations. Among the features is the ability to automatically generate the invoice required by the SAT, including from a photograph. The invoice is immediately attached to the transaction on the platform, eliminating the consolidation process for the finance team and allowing a company to deduct 16% VAT and up to 32% income tax.

With this, a company with hundreds of drivers working on the streets every day can issue a card for each of them, setting amount limits and authorized dates and times for use.

Another key advantage of this new solution is that it greatly simplifies the tax deduction process, allowing companies to download complete fuel expense reports with invoices already organized in just a few clicks. In addition, because it is a Mastercard card, this new payment method is widely accepted at service stations of the leading brands.

For companies seeking deeper analysis of their fleet and fuel expenses, Clara offers the ability to generate customized reports using AI-based technology. This makes it possible to discover, for example, significant increases in spending at a service station in a given month or even compare average spending with other companies in the sector.

The new product stems from Clara’s deep knowledge of its users’ expenses and needs. To gauge the potential impact of this launch, Mexico’s vehicle fleet reached 1,253,020 units by the end of 2022, and freight road transport alone contributed 3.7% of national GDP in the same year.

By the end of 2024, millions of transactions are expected to be made with Clara’s fleet-focused cards. “When we spoke with our clients about this launch, they all showed great interest, because it combines time savings, greater financial control, agility in the tax deduction process and unprecedented transparency,” summarizes Leonardo Ramos, Country Manager of Clara in Mexico.