Piston raises $15M to expand its cardless fuel-payment network

Why it matters

Piston is using fuel to build proprietary B2B payment rails. Its advantage will depend on station density and fleet volume, making national distribution as important as the software.

Vikram Sekhon and Shivam Shah's Piston raised a $15 million Series A to expand its cardless payment network for commercial fleets and fuel stations across the US. FPV Ventures led the round, with existing investors Spark Capital and Pear VC participating.

The Cupertino, California-based fintech announced the financing on September 10th, bringing its total capital raised to $22.5 million. Piston plans to spend the money on national network expansion, product development and senior hiring over the next 18 months.

FPV partner Nikunj Kothari (@nikunj) confirmed his investment in a September 14th post on X, describing a long-running interest in closed payment loops and pointing to the hundreds of billions of dollars that US businesses spend on fuel. His investment centers on a specific piece of Piston's architecture: transactions move through Piston's own network rather than the general-purpose card rails that dominate commercial fuel purchases.

Sekhon and Shah arrived at that architecture as fleet operators. Sekhon previously ran between 120 and 250 trucks, according to a 2025 interview with FreightWaves, and said fuel was the operation's second-largest cost after payroll. Physical cards created recurring problems around fraud, unpredictable fees and reconciling each purchase with the correct truck and driver.

Shah had also worked directly with fleets and recruited thousands of drivers before the pair started writing Piston's software, Kothari said in the Series A announcement. Sekhon's fleet remains Piston's initial testing environment for new features.

Taking the card out of the transaction

Piston connects fleets directly with participating fuel merchants. A driver selects a pump in Piston's mobile app, while Piston checks the driver's identity, assigned vehicle, location, fuel type and fleet purchasing rules before authorizing the fill.

That structure gives a fleet manager information before fuel begins flowing, rather than presenting a card transaction for review after it clears. Piston can restrict purchases by driver, truck, route, time, location and fuel type. The resulting transaction record links the gallons and cost to the employee and vehicle involved.

Piston pays the merchant and later invoices the fleet, according to FreightWaves. Piston says removing issuers, banks, card networks and processors from the flow also lets fuel stations negotiate discounts directly with fleets and measure the commercial traffic generated through the network.

The model gives Piston a familiar two-sided network problem. Fleets need enough participating stations along their routes to trust the product, while merchants need enough fleet volume to justify joining. The Series A primarily buys Piston the coverage needed to make that loop useful at a national level.

Piston says it is deployed at more than 2,000 stations in 48 states, up from more than 800 stations when Pear VC described its seed investment in July 2025. Piston reported an 8x year-over-year increase in payment volume, 40x growth in its merchant network and 98% customer retention in the Series A announcement. Those operating figures are company-reported.

Piston also says its point-of-sale integrations are certified across systems covering more than 95% of US merchant fuel locations. Certification creates technical reach; Piston still has to sign individual merchants and generate enough fleet demand around them.

From fuel payments to logistics infrastructure

Piston is adding two products around the transaction data passing through its network. Piston Guard evaluates purchases for anomalous activity and can flag or stop suspected fraud before completion. Piston Analytics Agent lets fleet operators query spending data and identify patterns without manually reviewing transaction records.

The fraud product supports Sekhon's central argument that fleet-card fraud begins with a transferable piece of plastic. "Fleet fuel fraud is a physical card problem, disguised as a detection issue," he said in the funding announcement.

Piston's larger ambition extends beyond filling stations. Sekhon and Shah plan to use national fuel coverage as the foundation for payment infrastructure across other logistics expenses. Fuel provides an unusually frequent transaction and a clear operational headache, making it the entry point for a broader network rather than the final market.

Piston previously raised $7.5 million from Spark Capital, Pear VC and BOND after joining PearX's winter 2025 cohort. The new round puts FPV Ventures behind the founders' harder bet: that enough fleets and independent stations will leave familiar card networks for a payment loop built around the driver, vehicle and pump.