LAUGFS unveils NFC enabled fuel card powered by Dialog

Bringing latest technology to your nearest fuel station, LAUGFS Petroleum Limited, a subsidiary of LAUGFS Holdings Limited, together with Dialog Axiata PLC.,  recently introduced  the country’s first ever Near Field Communication(NFC) fuel card enabling  corporates  to bring down their transport costs  by replacing  traditional fuel  books  used by them when buying fuel.

Developed in collaboration with Millennium Information Technologies (Private) Limited and Access Telecom Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd., the NFC enabled fuel card is a bold new step in enhancing the efficiency of fuel and fleet management for corporates.

LAUGFS Holdings Limited Chairman W.K.H. Wegapitiya speaking at an awareness meeting held to inform and educate their corporate clientele on the new feature said that during the past 10 year period LAUGFS has carried out a complete overhaul of the petroleum retail distribution sector by introducing a customer friendly, accurate fuel dispensing mechanism to the vehicle users of the country.

“Before we came in to this sector the Sri Lankan fuel retail centres, better known as petrol sheds, tended to create a very negative impression among consumers. Every time when a motorist visited a fuel station he tended to be at the mercy of the behaviour of the pump attendant and the environment at fuel stations too were not really pleasant. When we entered this sector, we changed the perception of the country’s fuel retail centres and by employing and training customer friendly staff and installing state-of-the-art fuel dispensing machines that gave the consumer 100% accuracy when dispensing fuel. Today, together with Dialog, we are introducing yet another innovative technology, the NFC fuel card, enabling especially our corporate customers to avail themselves of cutting edge technology to bring down their operational costs,” Wegapitiya said.  Near Field  Communications (NFC) is a short  range  frequency  wireless communication technology which enables  the  exchange of  data  between  devices over about  10 centimetre in distance.  The new technology is designed to give more benefits to its users such as fast and secure transactions, ease of use with a tap and go mechanism, multiple applications embedded in single card, operational efficiency and cost reduction along with proven cutting edge technology.

“Dialog’s expertise in NFC has laid the foundation for the development of a portfolio of NFC based transaction services, and we are singularly privileged to partner with LAUGFS, to bring the ‘Touch’ Corporate Fuel Card to market,” said Dialog Axiata Group Chief Executive Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya. “The

‘Touch’ fuel card together with its unique transaction administration and fulfilment engine will provide Sri Lankan Enterprises with an opportunity to achieve quantum enhancements in fuel and fleet management efficiency,” he added.By adopting the LAUGFS -Dialog ‘Touch’ corporate fuel card, organisations can now set pre-determined limits to employees.  Formerly, these transactions were carried out as a 100% manual procedure but with the use of the ‘Touch’ corporate fuel card, organisations can now monitor every transaction online with detailed information such as date, time, location of each transaction and security. The other benefits offered to the NFC fuel card users are that they will be in better position to monitor purchases made on the corporate card, freedom from fuel books and receipts to file, reduction in time wasted at petrol sheds along with an instant SMS notification after every transaction.