Embracing Change and Innovation – Linda Buss’s Journey at Enfuce

Meet Linda Buss, Senior Product Manager at Enfuce. With more than two decades in payments, we talk to Linda about how the industry has evolved, and what Enfuce brings to the table for businesses looking to keep up with change.

You have a long history in payments and card issuing. Can you tell us a bit about your background in the industry and what has changed since you began?

I started working for a card issuing processor straight out of high school and throughout my studies, so this is my 21st year in card issuing. I’m also the second generation in this area – my father also used to work in cards and card issuing.

When I started it was mostly magstripes, there was just one connection from Finland to Visa and Mastercard, authorisations were done by phone. My first summer I took 300 phone calls a day, keying in card numbers, expiration dates and amounts and giving out authorisation codes.

So, quite a bit has happened since then.

The fuel card industry, which your current role is focussed on, is still dominated by magstripe fuel cards…

In the fuel industry it’s a bit of a step back in time, but also there is so much potential. The room for improvement is huge. It’s our business to make payments as convenient and as efficient and as customer friendly as possible, and there is a lot to be achieved in the fuel vertical. That inspires me and drives me – I can take something and leave it in much better shape.

You joined Enfuce 4 years ago. What has your role consisted of in that time?

I’ve been a project manager, product owner, subject matter expert, and I’ve been involved in product design. In the early days at Enfuce with only 20-30 people it was very much all hands on deck – day-to-day you could be anything from the cleaning lady to the sales lead!

Nowadays our product management strategy is for us to focus on a particular vertical and gain expertise there, rather than trying to cover everything which is very difficult. My current role is Senior Product Manager, focussing on the fleet and fuel vertical. I try to meet as many customers as possible, both prospective and existing ones, giving me the opportunity to have that dialogue that keeps me up to date with the industry.

I enjoy the details. I like to understand how things work. My strengths are in understanding big logical systems. This is the thing that has kept me in this industry for 20 years – there is an endless amount of detail in payments and it’s always changing. There’s always something new to learn so it’s never boring.

Looking at your role in product design, can you give an example of a solution you have worked on for fuel cards?

One that comes to mind is repricing solutions – accommodating different types of pricing models. Solution design begins with, for instance, a high-level requirement such as we’d like our users to get a 10c discount on every litre that they consume. Other customers will want a fixed list price to be applied regardless of what the pump price is. A third customer might want a fixed list price up to, say, 1000 litres a month and then a discount.

So fuel repricing is quite complex and solution design needs to focus on how do we, technologically, create something that is very configurable and flexible, giving the fuel retailers a lot of room to negotiate and create a proposal that is attractive as possible? It also needs to be based on not just the requirements we know to be true today, but also considering whatever might come tomorrow.

So fuel repricing is quite complex and solution design needs to focus on how do we, technologically, create something that is very configurable and flexible, giving the fuel retailers a lot of room to negotiate and create a proposal that is attractive as possible? It also needs to be based on not just the requirements we know to be true today, but also considering whatever might come tomorrow.

This appeals to my love of logical systems – taking requirements and working out exactly what they mean, understanding some of the tech and what things work, and based on that designing solutions that both work today and tomorrow. This is all very much with our customers in the centre – how can we build something that can help them gain more customers, make more money, add new revenue streams?

Enfuce has experience across many different areas of payments and card issuing. What lessons can be learned from other industries with more modern systems in place that can be applied to the fuel industry?

Trusting that a good end-user experience will bring you the business. The traditional approach is that first you make the business case and then end-user experience comes after. New fintechs, particularly neobanks, focus first on end-user experience which has challenged us at Enfuce and me from day one by showing that it’s not enough that it works – it has to look good, and it has to work super well. For instance, if you say it’s real-time then it really has to be real-time.

Another thing is that the lines are getting blurred, for instance between fuel cards and expense cards. Employee benefits are also starting to enmesh with expense management. While the verticals we cover are very different with different things to consider, there are also commonalities that we can utilise and bring best practices and lessons learned from.

Thinking back to four years ago, what made you want to join Enfuce?

My main reason for leaving my previous company and joining Enfuce is that I got impatient and frustrated that projects took a long time – years even. If you wanted to develop something, if you saw something new in the market, it was like, OK it’s going to take at least one year or two years to catch up with the more modern and agile players.

Working at Enfuce – one thing is the pace, which can be daunting, but I think the most rewarding part is seeing the results, and how fast we get to the results. It’s not about maybe in a year or two or three we’ll get there but every month we see progress, or we see new launches.

Also, the trust that we have such a good team. Even though I have 20 years in the industry I don’t feel senior here. There are multiple people who have really long track records, really good experience. I’m especially impressed by our development teams. If there is a solution design, I don’t have to be concerned about whether we can actually do something. That has never been an issue. I have full confidence that whatever we want to do, we will find a way to do it. It’s extremely inspiring to be part of a team where you don’t see boundaries – it’s just a case of “we just have to do this.”

Working at Enfuce, each year doesn’t feel like a new chapter, it’s more like a whole new book.