Refuel, then what? How drive-offs are making an old debate unavoidable
Unpaid fuel cases have soared to new highs, straining transactional models built around dwell time and convenience retail. We explore what's really at stake in keeping the trust-based transaction, and how technology might close the loss without closing the door on it.
It happens in seconds, and almost always unseen. A car pulls up, refuels, and pulls away. The only witnesses are the security cameras and, occasionally, a nearby driver who barely registers what they've watched. The retailer may find out seconds later or worse, when the day's fuel sales don't match the inventory drawn from the tanks. A gap on a spreadsheet standing in for a theft that was unavoidable.
That gap has been widening. In the UK, a recent analysis found drivers stole an estimated £194,000 worth of fuel a day in the months following the outbreak of the Iran war, a 20% rise in incidents and a 48% jump in value compared with the preceding period. But the pattern isn't confined to Britain, as the Australasian Convenience and Petroleum Marketers Association has recorded a national increase of up to 30% in fuel theft since the same conflict began, costing the industry an estimated AU$80 million ($57.2 million) a year even before prices spiked further.
The rise in this type of crime amid higher gas prices isn't the novelty itself, what's changed is retailers' willingness to switch to prepayment mechanisms. In 2024, rising thefts pushed Petro-Canada to make prepayment mandatory across most of its Ontario stations. And that's where the real tension sits, as a large part of the mobility retail industry relies on post-payment models to drive longer dwell times and convenience-retail flow.
Paying it forward, literally
As sites evolve into multi-energy and multi-service mobility hubs, post-payment models are a key part of the equation. The economics behind this aren't incidental: fueling transactions make up 28% of all transactions at the average convenience store, according to NACS, meaning the pump isn't the end of the visit. Post-payment supports that flow by design, which is exactly what makes the shift toward prepayment worth watching closely.
It looks like a small operational change, pay before you refuel instead of after, but it inserts a transaction and a decision point ahead of the moment a customer would perhaps walk inside the store. The question this raises isn't whether prepayment works against theft, but how to minimize risk without touching the flow that acts as the spine of dwell time and convenience retail.
"Pre-payment or post-payment is often framed as an operational decision, but in reality, it's a strategic one," says Aart van Rooijen, CEO of BigBrother, an international supplier of security technology. "The moment a customer no longer needs to walk into the store, you're not running a retail destination anymore. You're running a commodity fuel point. That's the conversation the industry should be having, not just how to stop drive-offs."
An avoidable Copernican turn
Prepayment software can solve this conundrum, but so can closed-circuit security systems, license plate recognition and other failsafe mechanisms. These can even manage the same risk without touching the customer flow. But both paths ask different things of an operator.
The fast option is prepayment, a software or process change that can go live in weeks and shows up on a loss report almost immediately. Recognition software alongside license plate blacklists or closed-circuit systems tied to real-time alerts are the slower one, typically requiring hardware, integration and a genuine upfront investment. The dichotomy isn't which fix is "right," it's which timeline and balance sheet an operator is working with.
"Drive-offs don't have to be a structural threat. With the right technology [license plate recognition, smart data, and real-time alert systems], they're a manageable operational issue. The harder question is finding the balance between control and the experience you want to offer customers," adds van Rooijen.
No silver bullets
Real answers come from real business cases. For some operators, particularly those without the capital for hardware and integration, switching the payment flow may be the only lever available right now. Others may see that as fighting a rising tide.
But the data makes the trade-off explicit. If a record share of fueling customers is walking inside, and post-payment is part of what gets them there, then any fix to drive-offs has to reckon with what it might cost on the other side of the ledger. Not just in prevented theft, but in baskets not built.
What can’t be disputed is that fuel is a strong force driving in-store purchases. Payment platform Upside's transaction data shows in-store purchases declined week-over-week starting mid-March 2026, as fuel prices climbed, before rebounding when the June US-Iran ceasefire dropped pump prices by roughly 50 cents a gallon.
The right approach isn't universal. What the data does make clear is that this decision deserves the same scrutiny operators give any other capital investment, not a reflex response. The theft at the pump may have been unavoidable, but for industry, the discussion no longer is.
