This will provide oil companies and forecourt operators with rapid on-line authorisation response times - between two to three seconds for all card types - along with greater control and management of the acceptance of fuel cards for payment for both indoor and outdoor EPoS (Electronic Point of Sale) systems. Fleet managers will also benefit by having access to extensive DataCash web-reporting tools. Cardholders will enjoy speedier service and shorter queues.

DataCash already provides customers with payment services covering credit and debit cards, recurring payment, direct debits, PayPal, overseas payments (such as ELV's in Germany) and several more.

"Cost control is an extremely sensitive issue for both fuel providers and companies running fleets of vehicles," says Chris Hyde, Retail Sector Manager for DataCash. "Of equal importance, and having a direct impact on costs, is meeting high levels of the security around all forms of card data which is continually being driven by the PCI Council, card schemes and acquiring banks.

"With many thousands of fuel sites in the UK, in excess of 600 million transactions per year and 95% of UK forecourts now accepting some form of fuel card, we see this as a significant market opportunity and growth area for DataCash."

DataCash's launch of the fuel cards service reinforces the strategic investment the company made in ACK last year. ACK has been providing EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) applications for integration into EPoS within the fuel industry for many years and DataCash can now provide a complete end to end payment solution for the fuel retailing and bunkering industry.

Because DataCash's systems are fast and highly resilient, this benefits the cardholder through fewer delays when paying for their fuel.

Another benefit to forecourts and oil companies is that end of day reconciliations can be simplified using an extensive reporting system. These reports are avaiilable in real time, online, or downloadable for inclusion into back office systems; they offer high levels of control and savings over current methods which are often labour intensive. It is possible to perform reconciliations of all card payments within hours rather than days or weeks, thereby reducing the risk of losing money.