Piston, a Cupertino-based cardless payment network serving commercial fleets, has gone live at 341 Jacksons Food Stores locations across eight western US states. The rollout represents one of the larger single-partner expansions in the company’s history and takes Piston’s total merchant coverage to more than 3,000 fuel stations across 48 states.
The partnership gives fleet operators on Piston’s network additional fuelling options when planning routes in the western US, while Jacksons gains a channel to attract commercial fuel volume without adding a new card scheme or open-loop network. Piston replaces the physical fleet card with mobile authorisation tied to a specific driver and vehicle, giving fleet managers real-time spend visibility at the transaction level.
How the network model works
Piston’s commercial proposition rests on a direct integration at the point of sale rather than routing through the traditional card-network stack. The company says this removes four intermediaries from the standard transaction chain, improving the economics for both the fuel retailer and the fleet. Direct POS integration also gives Piston access to richer transaction data than an open-loop card network would see, which the company says underpins its fraud-prevention tooling.
That fraud layer now includes Piston Guard, a real-time tool that can flag or block suspected fraudulent purchases before settlement, and Piston Analytics Agent, which surfaces spending patterns for fleet operators. Both are positioned as AI-assisted capabilities, though the release did not provide performance benchmarks or third-party validation for either product.
Cory Jackson, president of Jacksons Food Stores, said that commercial fuelling is a meaningful part of the chain’s business and that the way fleets pay is shifting. “Working with Piston helps us keep pace with that shift and makes Jacksons a practical stop for fleets using modern payment technology,” he said.
Market context and competitive positioning
The US fleet card market is a well-established segment dominated by WEX, Fleetcor and Comdata, all of which operate large closed-loop or open-loop networks with deep integrations into fuel retailers and telematics providers. Piston’s bet is that a cardless, mobile-first network built on direct POS partnerships can undercut incumbents on cost and out-compete them on data granularity and fraud prevention.
The growth figures cited in the release are notable if accurate. Piston reported an eightfold increase in payment volume and a fortyfold expansion of its merchant network over the past year, though no base figures were provided, making the absolute scale difficult to assess. The company also noted that its POS integrations are certified on systems representing more than 95 percent of US merchant fuel sites, a figure that, if independently verified, would represent significant infrastructure coverage for a business of this age.
Piston closed a $15 million Series A round led by FPV Ventures earlier this year, with participation from existing backers Spark Capital and Pear VC, taking total funding to $22.5 million. The company said it intends to use that capital to onboard additional fuel retailers, expand product capabilities and grow headcount. At $22.5 million in total funding, Piston remains lightly capitalised relative to its stated ambitions. The pace of merchant network growth will be the clearest indicator of whether the direct-partnership model can scale before better-resourced incumbents respond.
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