Liza Cox-Hancy, CEO of Kora fuel cards. Photo / Supplied.
Liza Cox-Hancy, CEO of Kora fuel cards. Photo / Supplied.
Liza Cox-Hancy has been in the fuel industry throughout her career, from car leasing to the establishment of the Mobil Smiles loyalty programme.
Her mahi took her to this year’s National Association of Convenience Stores annual convention in Las Vegas. The event welcomes global stakeholders from the convenience and fuelindustry, showcasing cutting-edge technology and innovations from around the world.
“It’s really interesting to see how progressive New Zealand is by comparison to the rest of the world,” Cox-Hancy said.
She says payment processing is the key driver of technology innovation in the fuel industry which is already advanced in Aotearoa.
“When New Zealand tech companies develop things, they’re always developing it for New Zealand’s standards which is light years ahead of the rest of the world. So they end up being real innovators when they go overseas.”
Kora’s other distinguishing feature is that customers have a fuel account.
“It’s something that families have to budget for because fuel has obviously become really expensive, particularly in the last six to 12 months.”
Customers with a Kora fuel card (either for Waitomo or Mobil stations) can use the card at any respective fuel pump.
“You swipe it, it asks you for your PIN number, and then it lets you fill up your car. Then that transaction comes through Kora and we put it on an invoice for you.” Cox-Hancy said.
Waitomo Fuel stop at Bombay. Photo / Supplied.
She says at the end of a customer’s billing period, they get an invoice similar to a power bill to pay the lump sum of their fuel costs.
To make things easier, Cox-Hancy says Kora can link billing so it matches the customer’s payday.
Customers can get a weekly, fortnightly or monthly invoice depending on their preference.
“We wanted to give people access to a really meaningful discount every day without complicated restrictions.”
Despite the effects of Covid-19 at the start of operations, she says the company had an uptake of 700 customers in March, rising to around 4500 current customers.
Cox-Hancy says Kora plans to extend to other petrol providers than Waitomo and Mobil but currently, customers can use about 300 service stations across the country.
She says their unique fuel payment system allows more freedom for budgeting, but has this created an issue for payment?
“It’s not meant to be a credit scheme where you can pay it off over time. It’s very much a case of being able to collect all your transactions together and making one payment for fuel.”
“We’ve been very fortunate we haven’t had very much bad debt at all,” she said.
She says the company works with customers if there is any issue with payment.
“We’d like to make sure that we give people a fair deal to be able to get it paid off.”
She says total savings people have acquired on Kora since is just over $250,000 across all customers.
“It’s a long game for us … We’re really keen to keep chipping away at making sure people know that we are an alternative to loyalty programmes, and the savings really add up.”
A Kora fuel card costs $2 a month to cover admin costs for maintaining an account and that fee applies to all users, business or otherwise.
“We’ve kind of worked it out that that’s less than half a cup of coffee at the moment.”
Kora’s partnerships with Waitomo and Mobil come from Cox-Hancy’s previous work at leading fuel card operator Fleetcor which specialises in fuel cards for large vehicle operators.
She says these companies often struggle to give their workers fuel discounts because it would require “lots of little accounts” which are inefficient for firms to manage.
Cox-Hancy’s solution through Kora was to approach organisations wanting to give their staff a fuel discount.
“We pick up lots of little single operators and very small businesses that may not be putting through lots of transactions every month. That’s cool by us. We don’t mind if people do one transaction a month, just so long as we’re getting people to save.”
Cox-Hancy says she’s interested in getting involved in electric charging and a phone app.
“I’d like to see whether there would be a way we could look at getting electric vehicles as an option, just to keep all your charging under one bill.”
She said a Kora app is also on the cards for 2023.
“We will look at ways we can give people the choice to use a mobile app or have a plastic fuel card, or if they could use both potentially.
“There’s other convenient things that we can put in it too, like how to find a Mobil or a Waitomo station.”
She says keeping things convenient for customers is Kora’s main aim for 2023.
“My personal goal for Kora is to keep us relevant, keep us nimble. It’s to keep pushing forward to try and get more customers on, but not at such a rapid rate that we start departing from our core values ... providing service and flexibility to people and being a really trustworthy provider.”
“We really want people to know that we’re genuinely in this to try and help people save money.”
