NACS recently published the 2016 Retail Fuels Report, and it is full of fun statistics highlighting our great industry. Intevacon is proud to work with so many hard working, smart business men and women who keep gasoline flowing around the nation.

Many of you already know the numbers reported below, whether it be through an intuitive hunch or an objective observation. Here are a few industry highlights noted by NACS:

Price Per Gallon

• Over the last five years, the annual average retail mark-up was 19.7 cents per gallon.
• On average, it costs a retailer 12-16 cents to sell a gallon of gasoline.
• Over the last five years, the typical petroleum marketer averaged about 5 cents of profit per gallon of gasoline sold.

Payments

• 72% of consumers use plastic at the pump.
• Credit card fees comprise about 2-3%, and up to 4%, of a total purchase.
• Credit card transaction and bank processing costs continue to exceed convenience store profits.
• The average gross margin on fuel has averaged 6.2% before other expenses are considered.
• The average credit card fee is about 6 cents per gallon.
• Most merchants only make a few cents per gallon in pre-tax profit, sometimes even losing money on a fuel purchase.

Consumers

• Price is the main consideration for 64% of customers who need fuel.
• Gasoline purchases account for 4-5% of consumer spending.

Convenience Store Numbers

• Convenience stores account for 34.2% of retail outlets in the US (according to Nielsen).
• There are 124,374 convenience stores selling motor fuels in the United States.
• There are more than 154,000 convenience stores across the US.
• Major oil companies only own about 0.4% of the 124,374 US convenience stores.

EMV Compliance

• In 2014, the industry reported profits of $10.4 billion and credit card fees of $11.4 billion.
• Liability shifted to merchants in October 2015 who were not able to accept EMV cards.
• Fuel island terminals are required to accept EMV cards by October 2017 to prevent liability.
• The average cost per store to become EMV compliant is about $30,000, and the industry will pay more than $3.9 billion to move to EMV.

Intevacon has also had a big year. We partnered with a record number of new customers, growing our site count to over 2,200 across the US. We also started testing the Intevacon Fuels Network with select customers. In 2016, we plan to roll out the full capabilities of our network, implementing an “Everywhere, not Everybody” approach, as well as providing full ACH payment capabilities to allow our customers to streamline their accounts receivables process.

We hope 2015 was a good year for you as well, and we trust that you are also excited about a big year in 2016. If you would like to reach out to us to discuss automating your fleet cards or getting involved with our network, please call 678-739-4450 or email us a moreinfo@intevacon.com.