Piston, a payments platform built for commercial fleets, has raised $15 million in Series A funding as it moves to expand its cardless fuel payment network across the United States.
FPV Ventures led the financing round, with existing investors Spark Capital and Pear VC also taking part, according to Piston. The latest investment brings the company’s total funding to $22.5 million.
Piston said its payment volume has grown eightfold over the past year, while its merchant network has expanded 40-fold. The company now operates at more than 2,000 fuel stations across 48 states.
Its point-of-sale integrations are certified and live on systems representing more than 95% of U.S. merchant fuel sites, according to the company.
Replacing physical fuel cards
Piston’s technology is designed to replace physical fuel cards with a payment system that authorizes transactions for individual drivers and vehicles directly at the point of sale.
The company says the model can provide fleets with more immediate visibility into fuel spending while reducing fraud and the administrative workload associated with managing physical fuel cards.
“Commercial fuel still runs on payment technology built for another era,” said Vikram Sekhon, Piston’s co-founder and CEO. “Fleet fuel fraud is a physical card problem, disguised as a detection issue.”
Piston is also incorporating artificial intelligence tools into its platform as it seeks to give fleet operators greater control over fuel transactions and the data generated by those purchases.
Its first AI product, Piston Guard, evaluates individual transactions for anomalies and can flag or block suspected fraudulent spending before a transaction is completed, according to the company.
The second product, the Piston Analytics Agent, is designed to help fleet operators analyze spending data and uncover patterns without manually sorting through large amounts of information.
Together, the AI tools build on Piston’s broader emphasis on real-time transaction controls. The system is intended to help fleets identify potentially fraudulent purchases while also giving them better tools to analyze spending after transactions take place.
Built from trucking experience
Piston was founded by Sekhon and co-founder Shivam Shah, both of whom previously operated trucking fleets.
Sekhon told FreightWaves previously that he operated between 120 and 250 trucks, with fuel representing his fleet’s second-largest expense after payroll. He said the fleet had experienced fraud, unpredictable fees and the administrative burden involved in reconciling fuel transactions.
That experience played a role in shaping Piston’s approach to fleet payments.
In 2025, the company said drivers could use a smartphone and a dynamic QR code to authorize fuel purchases, with each transaction linked to information such as the vehicle, time, location and type of fuel purchased.
Rapid network expansion
Piston has expanded substantially since its previous financing round.
In June 2025, the company raised $7.5 million in total funding and said it served more than 120 fleets across 800 fuel stations. At the time, it reported more than $20 million in annualized transaction volume.
The latest $15 million investment will be used to accelerate the expansion of Piston’s payments network, continue product development and add senior executives across the company.
Piston said it intends to establish coverage in every U.S. region over the next 18 months.
The company also plans to eventually expand beyond fuel payments into broader logistics payments infrastructure, although it has not provided additional details on which segments of logistics payments it intends to pursue.
Why this matters
Fuel remains a major operating cost for trucking fleets, making transaction controls and fraud prevention important elements of fleet management.
Piston is positioning its cardless payment system as an alternative to traditional fuel cards while it continues to expand its station network and develop tools aimed at giving fleets greater control over fuel transactions and spending data.
