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A Fleet Credit Card Product allows you to issue payment cards funded from a financial account held by a business. Fleet cards allow companies or public sector organizations to purchase fuel and vehicle maintenance-related services. Businesses such as towing companies, delivery services, and appliance repair groups may utilize fleet cards to keep track of fuel costs, mileage driven, and maintenance schedules. In addition, public sector entities such as school districts and wildlife resource management departments may also benefit from fleet card usage. Fleet cards are appealing to organizations of all sizes - from those with 2-5 vehicles to those managing hundreds. Fleet card products provide mechanisms to restrict purchases to fueling stations, designate cards to vehicles rather than persons and report deeper transaction metrics.
Most Fleet Products allow you to set up a Product Funding Financial Account that will serve as the base of funds for each of your Account Holder's Financial Accounts. The Product Funding Financial Account can be used as a source for funds or the funds can be loaded directly into the Account Holder’s Financial Account.
Fleet Products require the use of Spend Rules that limit how Payment Cards may be used. Some rules are programmed into the EMV chip in the physical cards while others are enforced through Highnote’s Platform. For example, Highnote’s Fleet Product encodes a value on the EMV chip to allow purchases of fuel and other products while Highnote’s Platform prevents purchases of “non-fleet” items, such as meals through DoorDash, via MCC restrictions.
When building a Fleet Card Product, you may enable boundaries regarding variables such as the following:
In addition to the standard authorization process, Fleet Card Products often, though not always, involve collaborative authorization. Collaborative authorization allows you to share in the decision whether to approve or decline each fleet transaction. The collaborative authorization feature supports testing collaborative authorization through simulation endpoints.
Transactions for Fleet Card Products include ancillary information specific to the fleet vertical via specialized clearing messages. Fleet transactions contain three levels of data collected by the Merchant/Acquirer.
In the Test Environment, you can create a Fleet Credit Card Product from the Highnote Dashboard or with the CreateCardProduct
mutation in the Highnote GraphQL API.
Fleet Credit card products issue payment cards to Business Account Holders. You can create a Business Account Holder from both the Highnote Dashboard and GraphQL API.
Your Account Holders may hold cards from multiple card products.
Once you have created an Account Holder, you can open an Application to onboard them to your Card Product.
Opening an Application triggers the identity verification checks (KYC) necessary for your Card Product. These checks must pass in order to onboard the Account Holder. To create the Application you will need the cardProductId
and primaryAuthorizedPersonId
.
When the Application is opened, it will be in a PENDING
state. This means the Application is being reviewed and the appropriate KYC checks are running against the Account Holder. You can only have one Application open at a time for a given Card Product and Account Holder.
Before an Application is submitted, the required terms and conditions and relevant disclosures for the Card Product (e.g. the Cardholder Agreement) must be presented and agreed to by the Account Holder. An Account Holder’s consent must be captured before opening an Application and include who is consenting, primaryAuthorizedPerson
, what they are consenting to, cardProductID
, and when they consented, consentTimestamp
.
Financial Accounts hold the balance for Payment Cards. To create a new Financial Account pass the ID of a verified Application.
Financial Accounts have an externalId
that allows you to tie the Financial Account to an entity in your system. If you do not pass in an externalId
, Highnote will generate one.
Once you have created and funded a Financial Account, you can issue a Payment Card. All Payment Cards start as a virtual card, and can later be ordered as a physical card.
You may only submit one order for a given Payment Card. If the order is canceled or fails, you may try again for the same card. However, if an order is successful and you need another Physical Card, you will need to issue a new Payment Card.
Once you have issued a Payment Card you can create an order for a Physical Card. When ordering a Physical Card, you can ship to the Account Holder's address on file or specify a different shipping address.
Physical Card orders require:
Use the following mutation to create a Physical Card order:
Selecting the number
or cvv
fields requires that you are PCI compliant.
Highnote recommends using the Card Viewer SDK to securely display payment card data and and reduce PCI burden.
To display the primary account number (PAN) and CVV to users, you can fetch them from the API by adding number
and cvv
to the selection set.
For Fleet Card Products, you can simulate a deposit into your Product Funding Account in the Test Environment. Simulating deposits does not require you to connect an external bank account. Afterward, you will be able to set the credit limit for the Account Holder Financial Account you created earlier. You can currently simulate via WIRE
.
The memo field can be used to display what typically appears on a given transfer. In the Live Environment you won’t have the ability to control the memo field as there are specific guidelines on how WIRE
and ACH
appear to an Account Holder.
The SimulateDeposit
API will set the Available Credit for your Fleet Product Funding Account.
Once you Issue a Financial Account and a Payment Card and apply Available Credit to one of your Account Holders, they can utilize the Payment Card for fuel and maintenance purchases. Each transaction results in Ledger Entries that reflect adjustments to Available Credit and Outstanding Balance Receivables. You will need to update the Ledgers on the Payment Card to reflect repayment and adjustments per your Card Product's parameters and your method for billing your Account Holders. Depending on how you manage discounts and billing, you will need to apply credits and debits to Payment Cards to ensure each has an appropriate Available Credit balance.
Once you secure funds from your Account Holder, you may raise the Available Credit Ledger to match the amount they have left to spend on their Payment Card.
You may need to reduce the Available Credit Ledger to match the amount an Account Holder may spend on their Payment Card.
Setting or updating a credit limit is an asynchronous process with the Highnote team to ensure your ledger balances and validations are in check.
For Product verticals like Credit or Fleet, you can create a credit limit on your Account Holder's Financial Account based on your underwriting criteria, agreements, and product guidelines. The credit limit establishes a maximum spending limit for a given period, and authorizations exceeding the credit limit will be declined.
Once you have created a credit limit, you have the flexibility to update credit limits as you factor in new information, such as changes in your customers' financial situations.
As part of this feature, Highnote tracks the total credit extended to your Account Holders' Financial Accounts and ensures the extended credit does not exceed your Card Product’s limits.
You can use the following mutation to set and update a credit limit:
Once you've completed the basics of setting up your card product, you can expand and test your integration further: