Fleet and mobility industry leaders from across North America converged on Portland, Maine, last week to learn how to manage fuel costs, prevent fraud, and drive efficiency using AI, data, telematics, and other tools during the third annual WEX North America Mobility Summit.

The week featured two key announcements, one during the WEX NAM Summit and the other the day before at the WEX Venture Capital Summit.

“An event like this at the NAM Summit is an opportunity for industry leaders to come together with WEX as a facilitator. WEX has earned this position in the industry through all the relationships and knowledge that we have and have had through the years,” said Julie Scharff, vice president, Energy Partners, WEX. “In one room, you could have a telematics provider talking to a global energy provider. In another room, you could have an OEM talking with a major fleet. You never know what conversations you're going to stumble across when you're walking through the hallways here at the summit.”

Who is WEX?

“WEX is a company that sits at the intersection of all parts of the mobility industry,” Scharff added. “We have connections with drivers, with fleets, with energy partners, with fleet management companies. We understand all parts of this mobility ecosystem. We're the leader in the industry. We've been doing it for more than 40 years, and being part of WEX has taught me, and has allowed me to share, everything I need to know about mobility.”

The WEX NAM Summit offered participants the choice of presentations, including:

• AI-Driven Fraud Prevention: SecureFuel Controls and Actionable Insights
• Data & AI-Driven Acquisitions and Lifecycle Innovation
• Mobile Payments & APIs: AI Assistant + Seamless Fraud Management
• Mobile Payments & Fleet APIs
• Evolution of Connected & Mixed Fleet Management
• Removing Plastic: Cardless Payment Experiences
• Unified Mobility and Corporate Payments Platform

SecureFuel Launch at the WEX NAM Summit

During the NAM Summit, WEX launched SecureFuel, a fraud-detection tool that uses AI-powered models to analyze fleet card transaction data and compare it with vehicle telematics data to prevent misuse or fraudulent purchases. It is now available to eligible fleet customers.

SecureFuel combines data from its closed-loop network about purchase details, including fuel quantity, fuel type, and merchant location, with telematics data and WEX-designed, AI-powered fraud models to help identify suspicious activity more precisely while reducing false positives.

“Fraud prevention is only as strong as the information behind each decision,” said Carlos Carriedo, chief operating officer, Americas Payments and Mobility at WEX. "SecureFuel gives us a more complete view of each purchase, assisting customers stop unauthorized transactions without creating unnecessary disruption for drivers. This capability is especially important in today’s volatile fuel price market.”

WEX leverages all that data with what Dylan Jones, senior vice president and general manager, Mobility Growth. called “deep expertise with the most modern real-time information” to deliver insights and now tools to fight fuel fraud before it can happen.

“For our customers, we know that control is incredibly important,” Jones added. “With the SecureFuel launch, we're enabling customers to connect their fleet transaction data and their fueling behavior with their telematics data and telemetry from the vehicles.”

WEX said SecureFuel is not a standalone feature; it strengthens the value provided by the WEX Fleet card by providing:

• Closed-loop network – WEX sees transactions at the product level, which allows fleet managers to see purchase details and know that drivers bought fuel and not fuel plus extra items.
• Acceptance and controls – SecureFuel is accepted at 95% of fuel stations in the U.S. and provides spend controls such as limits, time of day, day of week, and product class.
• AI fraud protection – WEX modeling scours tens of millions of transactions each month while learning fraud patterns and helping catch fraud actions before they cost fleets money.
• Zero fraud liability – If something slips through, WEX pledges to fleets that they will get their money back.
• Policy at the point of truth – Powered by telematics, SecureFuel helps stop fraud and misuse at the transaction, rather than having it be spotted a month later in a spreadsheet or report.

Keynote: Analyzing Energy Disruptions

Robert Cekuta, who served four decades in the U.S. Foreign Service and was the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan from 2015 to 2018, took the stage as the keynote and discussed the state of energy in 2026. Part of that talk was delving into the current situation with Iraq and the Strait of Hormuz. But he also detailed where all the global chokepoints are in the crude oil supply.

Providing data and charts, Cekuta reminded the audience that the U.S. is the largest oil producer, surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia. He discussed the players in OPEC and OPEC+, displaying charts showing each player's share of oil production.

The global production of oil is about 100 million barrels a day, with the U.S. currently producing 13.6 million barrels.

“We're producing flat out. We're producing what we want to produce, what we can produce, and basically what the market says it wants from us,” Cekuta explained.

Standard Fleet Launch at the WEX Venture Capital Summit

While the WEX NAM Summit typically kicks off on a Tuesday morning, the day before is the WEX Venture Capital Summit, an event which brings together start-up companies and features sessions about how to fund and scale such enterprises.

However, this year’s WEX Venture Capital Summit featured the launch of Standard Fleet, a connected vehicle platform. WEX Venture Capital has worked with Standard Fleet, which is now available to WEX customers.

Standard Fleet can bring device-free telematics to fleets.

The Standard Fleet platform is available across more than 30 supported vehicle brands. WEX said it can activate compatible vehicles quickly, with no installation appointments, vehicle downtime, or external devices required.

Existing WEX customers can simply sign up and by giving a list of VINs to us, they can have data flowing from their vehicles often the same day without needing to install a hardware device into their vehicles, which is a real a real game changer for fleets because those devices cost money, they can break, and you have to pay to have them be installed,” explained David Hodge, CEO, Standard Fleet.

The coming together of WEX Venture Capital and Standard Fleet demonstrates that the mobility industry is built on relationships. David Klein, head of WEX Venture Capital, and Hodge met at an event.

“I think Standard Fleet had been on my radar for a while because David had previously sold a company in the mobility space. So, I'd actually been eager to meet him,” Klein shared in an exclusive interview with Automotive Fleet. “I was speaking at a conference in Austin, Texas, and David happened to hear that presentation. We met after, and there was clearly a lot of fit between our two companies.”

Klein explained how WEX Venture Capital, the venture arm of WEX, helps startups in the mobility space.

“It was created to find compelling emerging areas around WEX's business. So WEX has 600,000 customers. A lot of those are in the physical economy. A lot of those are fleet-centric businesses, and those are changing. They're growing with AI, they're growing with all the digitization that's coming into those fields. And there's a lot of innovation happening that we are able to go find and bring to our customers through WEX Venture Capital,” Klein explained.

“So, we get to build relationships with them and through our distribution help them find their way into the market and reach scale a lot faster than they might be able to alone,” Klein added.