Piston raises $15M to kill the fleet fuel card
What's the deal? PistonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a cardless payments platform connecting commercial fleets and gas stations, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. FPV VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → led the round, with existing investors Spark Capital and Pear VCDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → participating. The financing brings Piston's total capital raised to $22.5 million.
What's the endgame? Piston removes the physical fuel card and authorises every purchase for a specific driver and vehicle at the point of sale. Fleet owners get real-time visibility into fuel spending; merchants gain direct access to commercial demand and lower transaction costs.
Why now? The round follows a year of rapid growth. Payment volume rose 8x year over year, the merchant network grew 40x, and customer retention held at 98%. Piston is now live at more than 2,000 stations across 48 states, with point-of-sale integrations certified across systems covering more than 95% of US merchant fuel sites.
The company frames the opportunity around a $900 billion-plus trucking industry that still runs on decades-old card infrastructure, which fleets say breeds fraud, poor spending visibility, and slow reconciliation.
What's the money for? Piston will accelerate the national build-out of its network, advance product development, and add senior leaders. Over the next 18 months, it aims to establish coverage across every US region and lay the groundwork to move beyond fuel into broader logistics payments.
The founders built the two-sided network from firsthand experience. Co-founder and chief executive officer Vikram Sekhon and co-founder Shivam Shah previously operated fleets and dealt directly with fuel-card fraud and hidden costs; Sekhon's fleet remains the first environment where Piston tests new features.
The company is also extending its controls with two AI products. Piston Guard evaluates each transaction for anomalies and can block suspected fraud before it completes, while the Piston Analytics Agent surfaces spending patterns for fleet owners.
"Fleet fuel fraud is a physical card problem, disguised as a detection issue," Sekhon said. "We removed the card and built a network that authorizes every purchase for a specific driver and vehicle at the point of sale."
The signal: Piston's raise sits in the upper tier for its stage, and its pitch reflects a broader push to rebuild B2B payments on proprietary rails rather than legacy card networks. "Piston moves that money over its own rails, with no card networks or intermediaries in between," said FPV Ventures partner Nikunj Kothari.
Read more: pr-inside.com
Image credit: Cole Eaton Photography
