Using plastic money for tanking up your vehicle is now as common as it can get. All credit cards floating in the market can be used to purchase petrol in any petrol pump.

However a fuel surcharge is imposed on the consumer if he uses a credit card option to buy fuel. When payment of fuel at petrol pumps are made by cards, a fuel surcharge of some percentage is levied by these outlets over and above the cost of fuel.

There are principally three ways of plastic payment for fuel purchase: pre-paid petro cards, co-branded petro cards and plain vanilla credit cards.

Pre-paid Petro cards

Pre-paid fuel cards allow you to load certain amount of money in the card and when it is swiped for fuel, the bill amount is debited from the card. It has an electronic chip which stores information about the amount of money that you have loaded in your card. Every time you use this card to make a purchase, the amount is deducted from the card. You also earn rewards points while using such cards. The reward points can be redeemed for petro miles or rewards that are decided by the issuer. Also there always is a surcharge wavier on using a pre-paid petro card of a particular company.

Presently there are two types of pre-paid cards in the market named as HP Smart 1 and BPCL Petro cards.

HP Smart 1 provides you with following features:

• 5% rewards on total spend at any Hindustan Petroleum retail outlet.
• All petrol and diesel fills, lubricants, servicing, and even your shopping bill at HP Speedmart Stores (convenience store) will be eligible for reward points, provided you use the HP Smart 1 card to pay for these services.
• Thes accumulated reward points can be redeemed for free fuel.
• The card can be loaded for minimum amount of Rs 250 and in multiples of Rs 50 thereafter.