Fueling the future, together

A reflection on VCF 2026

I've been opening VCF for three years now. Each year has felt different, not just in what I've had to say, but in how the room feels when I walk in.

When I took over this business three years ago, the first thing I had to do was look at it clearly. That meant being honest with our customers about where we were, what needed to change, and what we were going to do about it. It was a year of reset. The second year was about accountability. Here's what we said. Here's what we did. Here's what's still hard. No sugarcoating.

This year was different. I could feel it before I even took the stage.

A while back, I was at NACS. A merchant came to that show specifically to find us. Not to complain. To talk about what's next. They were seeking us out. That moment stuck with me, because not long before that, walking up to a Verifone booth at an industry show wasn't exactly something people rushed to do.

That has changed. What I wanted to show everyone at VCF 2026 is why it's never going back.

Closing the loop

Before talking about where we're going, I needed to close the loop on where we've been. Specifically, and without spin.

VASC Councils are launched and active across all regions. These aren't ceremonial. They have teeth. The conversations happening in those councils are directly shaping what we build. The Commander Advisory Group is back as a real forum whose feedback shows up in our product decisions. Commander Fleet is in production and live. Base 55.02 shipped as the most feature-rich release in Commander history. Help desk support expanded with Hindi and Spanish language capability. And the chronic site remediation program is active and trending in the right direction.

The numbers: 55,000+ Commander units rolled out across all regions, and a 12% year-over-year reduction in chronic site remediation.

Were all of those perfect? No. But we showed up, did the work, and didn't hide from the hard stuff. That chapter is closed.

What Commander really is

I said something on stage that I want to repeat here, because I think it gets to the heart of what we're building.

Commander is running at the pump at 2 AM. It's in the back office when a manager is reconciling the shift. It processes the fleet card, runs loyalty, and talks to the dispenser. The thing that, when it's working, nobody thinks about. And when it's not, everyone knows immediately.

Some of our customers have been running on Commander for ten, fifteen, twenty years. That's not a software relationship. That's infrastructure. Trust built in the dark, when no one's watching.

That's what we've been building on. This year, we gave it the identity it deserves.

The Commander family — Commander C18 Point of Sale, Commander Fleet, Commander Payments, Commander Central, and more — is now a cohesive platform built for the full lifecycle of petro and convenience retail. Not a collection of separate products. One platform. One vision.

Built for everyone in the ecosystem

Here's something I said on stage that I want to be clear about, because I thought carefully before saying it.

We are the only player in petro retail actively building for every stakeholder in the ecosystem at the same time. Not just the operator. Not just the major oil. Not just the VASC. All of them. Simultaneously.

That's not a marketing claim. That's a product and go-to-market decision we make every single day.

When we build something new, we don't build it for one group. We build it so all four win: operators and merchants, major oil partners, VASCs and resellers, and technology partners. Nobody else in this space is doing that. We are.

The proof: McLure Oil moved from a Commander Fleet pilot to full deployment. Not because of a feature list, but because of how we showed up. All hands. Every function. Treating their success like it was ours. That's the approach that makes this platform worth betting on.

Innovation that matters

I walked through a curated set of innovations at VCF. Not a feature catalog, but the things that should make operators say: finally.

Commander Connect brings in-app chat support and real-time reports. Your tools should move with you, and now they do.

The AI-powered Help Center was rebuilt from the ground up. When something goes wrong, the answer should come to you. Not the other way around.

Commander Central, formerly C-Site, continues to expand with more capability and broader reach, growing into a more complete operational tool for multi-site operators.

Smart upselling brings predictive intelligence quietly into the background, making teams better without getting in the way.

Verifone biometrics introduces seamless shopper recognition and loyalty tracking, turning every visit into a loyalty opportunity with no card required.

AI is already here

I want to be direct: AI isn't coming to Commander. It's already here.

Our engineering teams run a custom agentic pipeline purpose-built for the Petro domain. AI works alongside our engineers through every sprint, from planning to code review to testing. We're catching defects earlier, shipping faster, and delivering higher quality software. Our training teams are building materials in days instead of weeks. Our field operations team uses AI to scrub thousands of support tickets and identify chronic site patterns before they become problems. And we've cut contracts SLA turnaround from three business days to under one.

Inside the tools our customers interact with, AI is already changing the experience. The Commander Help Center's AI search assistant makes hundreds of pages of documentation instantly searchable. The Help Desk Agent Assistant, our AI assistant for frontline support agents, gives agents a full site snapshot, real-time Knowledge Base recommendations, and automated call summaries from the first second of a call. Team Leader Analytics surfaces trending issues across our support organization before they spike.

On the horizon: AI-assisted insights in Commander Central, bringing plain-language access to operational data designed to reduce effort for retailers without introducing new risk. We're taking a deliberate, phased approach guided by customer feedback.

Better questions. Clearer answers. Within trusted boundaries.

A platform worth building on

The partner ecosystem at VCF 2026 made the platform story concrete. Serious companies with real options are choosing to build on Commander, and that's not something you can manufacture.

AI Self-Checkout: Mashgin, a longtime Commander partner, continues to expand AI-powered checkout across c-store sites. Deligo recently completed their Commander integration, bringing a second strong AI self-checkout provider into the ecosystem. Two players in this space choosing Commander is not a coincidence.

Loyalty: Liquid Barcodes uses our Commander transaction API to extend loyalty visibility to non-members — the customers who show up but aren't yet enrolled. That's new reach and new value, unlocked by Commander data. Velocity Logic brings hybrid loyalty switching, giving operators the flexibility across programs they've been asking for.

Foodservice: GRUBBRR brings a fully integrated foodservice kiosk solution, the answer to the revenue opportunity that c-stores without a food program are leaving behind.

These are just some of our partner examples. There are so many others. That's the platform story in practice.

What I want people to take away

I've been in this industry long enough to know the difference between a vendor that presents at its customers and one that actually builds with them. We want to be the second thing. And I think, genuinely, that over the past three years we've shown we mean it.

The rest of VCF 2026 — the Ask the Expert sessions, the CAG and VASC councils, the breakouts and partner panels — wasn't just programming. It was proof. Proof that the feedback loop between our customers and our teams is real, and that the conversations happening at VCF directly shape what gets built.

I left St. Pete Beach energized. Not just because the week went well, but because of what I heard from the people in that room. The questions they asked. The ideas they brought. The fact that they showed up and engaged the way they did.

We're not done building. We're fueling the future, together.

I can't wait to show you what comes next.