Alan King, Group President of International Vehicle Payments from Corpay, as well as Peter Walker, who is the CFO of Corpay. Alan joined Corpay in 2016, and he has held many leadership roles in the international markets. Prior to Corpay, he spent 11 years at Mastercard. Peter joined Corpay in July of last year after serving as CFO of Instructure and Sterling Check. Peter was here last year, so thank you again for joining us. Corpay has been a spectacular stock this year, so thank you guys for making it rain. Maybe we will start with Alan. You spent many years at Corpay, have had a front row seat to the company's evolution. Maybe you talk about your journey at Corpay and how your role has evolved.
Sure. As you said in the intro, I joined in 2016. I am a Brit, by the way, in case you did not realize it from my opening few words. I joined in London after a career in other payments businesses, including Mastercard. Worked for Ron for 10 years, and if I think about 10 years ago when I joined, we were a lot smaller. I think we have tripled revenue in the last 10 years. More than that, we have also kind of shifted the company. When I joined in the vehicle payments back then, it was FleetCor, we called it Fleet. I think Fleet represented about two-thirds of the company from a revenue standpoint. Cross-border, we did not even have a business in cross-border, and I think corporate payments or spend management was about 10% of the company.
I have seen a lot of shifts over the 10 years that I have been here, as I am sure you have if you have been following us for that long. As for me and what I have been doing, I joined running the U.K. and Australasia. The main mission was to really turn around our fleet business in the U.K. that was lagging in terms of growth. Really, we have a great position there, and it was about monetizing that and taking advantage of that position. I took on the rest of Europe a couple of years later. Big mission coming out of, I guess, 2019, 2020 for us was EVs are coming to Europe. What are we going to do about it given the strong position we had in fleet?
We were first out of the blocks and invested in companies and also built capability to really try and monetize the shift in the market, especially in fleet from fuel vehicles to EV vehicles. That was a big part of those kind of couple of years. I then moved to the U.S. just after COVID. I ran what we then called Global Fleet, so all of our fleet assets, including the U.S. fleet business. I ran that for a couple of years out of Atlanta. Again, the mission there was to get the U.S. business on a better footing. Obviously, we had had some challenges, and it was starting to turn around that business starting about 2022, 2023. Then a couple of other things happened. We bought a couple of other assets, including PayByPhone.
We moved back to London, and then we set out trying to build a corporate payments business in Europe, which is really where my focus is today. As well as running all of our international fleet assets and vehicle payments assets, I am building a corporate payments business starting with the U.K., and hopefully take that to other parts of Europe, and we are about a year into that journey.
Great. Good review. Maybe you could walk us through the different regions and what the priorities are in each of those markets and the biggest opportunities for growth over the next several years in vehicles and corporate payments as well.
Sure. I have got a diverse region, and it spans everything from Mexico to U.K. and Europe and all the way to Australasia. It is not one business. It is a set of very similar types of businesses, but there are different stages of their development. I really divide it into three key priorities. One is for the mature vehicle businesses. The second is the fast-growing ones, because we have plenty of runway in a few of our markets where we see still high growth in vehicle. Then the third one is corporate payments. In the mature markets, like the U.K. or the Netherlands, for example, we have got great positions.
We have got a very high market share of the fleet card market and the fleet management market, and relatively secure moats in terms of how we operate and the products that we have and how we go to market. The big market shares coupled with not really a growing fuel, as in liquid fuel market, leads us to compete in other directions. What do I mean by that? EV, as I said before, is a big source of growth for us. We have invested early. We are growing 30% every year in EV, gives us new opportunities with existing customers and to go after new types of customers. If you think about traditional fleets in EV, we were also able to serve OEMs, we are able to serve leasing companies, we are able to serve big oil companies and CPOs that need charging solutions from us.
That gives us an opportunity to grow in mature markets, as well as AI. What we have done this year as well is embed AI capability into our products. We sit on a lot of fleet data. We capture unique fleet data that many other players don't capture. By taking AI capabilities and embedding them into our products, we are able to serve up richer solutions to our existing customers and prospects. Things like anomaly reporting, helping them find anomalies in their fleet patterns or cost optimization opportunities that maybe they would have had to dig in a little deeper before our solutions were brought to market. Those are kind of two examples of how we are growing in our mature markets and why we still feel confident we can continue to see those businesses do well.
Then we have the high-growth markets of places like Australia and Mexico. TAM is big. We have smaller market shares, and we have been growing in those markets, a market like Australia, mid to high teens consistently for the last few years. We are really growing through sales. It is as simple as that. We have advantage selling systems. We put a lot of investment and focus on our selling systems, and that sales machine allows us to continue to grow market share. When I joined 10 years ago, I think we had about a 5%-6% market share of the Australian market. We are now up to 13%-14%. That compound effect has really given us, I think, good momentum, has allowed us to invest in better products as well and value-added services. Again, we continue to capture more growth there.
Last but not least, spend management and corporate payments. Big area of focus. We have invested heavily over the last year. We will continue to invest. For the last 12 months, we have been focused on getting the business off the ground and then starting to sell to our existing customers as well as new prospects, and we are pleased with the progress so far.
Peter, you want to talk about how it spools up into the growth algorithm?
Yeah, absolutely. When we think about the growth algorithm for the company, 9%-11% is our organic growth algorithm. We think about how we get there. Important to go through the components. We have published all of this information for investors, but I do not think we have necessarily put it together well, so we came up with a new approach this quarter, and I think people really appreciated that. Let us take 2026, for example. Let us say we do $100 of revenue in 2026. We turn the corner to 2027, we have a 92% retention rate. So I wake up January 1st, and I know I have got $92 going into the next year. Same-store sales, plus or minus one percent, so it does not really add much to the overall growth.
Call it pricing and other initiatives we do adds about another 3%, so I am at 95. I have got a significant amount of sales that happened in 2026 that carry over into 2027. So call that seven to eight points. So I really wake up at the beginning of January saying, "Okay, I have got 102-103 in the bag." For the overall enterprise, where does the additional seven come from? That is from the sales system that Alan speaks to, which is not only strong in Alan's business, but strong capability across the organization. We have been able to deliver 10% organic growth for five of the six years. So definitely a sustainable advantage for us. So we think this algorithm is helpful to investors as they think about, how do things move forward?
I would just double-click on, Alan has been talking about the corporate payments business that we launched organically in the U.K., but we have also had a massive rotation of the company into corporate payments. It is about vehicle payments the same size now, so incredible growth there. When we move over to corporate payments, it is even a better growth algorithm because the retention rate there is higher. It is about 95%, and the sales rate is higher. So our corporate payments business for the quarter that we just ended grew at 18% organic growth. Again, on the same foundation of the algorithm, but within that particular segment, we are just able to grow stronger because it is such an attractive segment for us.
That is great. Thank you. I guess when we think about vehicle payments, just double-clicking on that, I think, Peter, I heard you talk about high single-digit sort of targeted growth per year for that business. Maybe you could just talk, Alan, about where it is in its life cycle, because we tend to think it is mature, especially in the developed world.
Yeah.
How do we get to high single digits, and where are the largest growth opportunities?
We've been consistently, I mean, my business has consistently grown high single, low double for the last few years, if I have to go back to COVID.
Very consistent.
I think the consistency, despite the maturity of some of the markets, comes from the mix of markets that we have, the selling systems, and again, the innovation that we brought. If I think about a mature market like the U.K., which is the biggest market for us outside of the U.S. in fleet, we have about a 40% market share of fuel cards. As I said, if you look at the fuel consumption, what we call liquid fuel, old-fashioned fuel, it's falling. It's falling because of an energy transition to EV. It's falling because vehicles get more efficient. Sometimes it falls because economic activity is not as great. Yet we've managed to continue to grow consistently in that environment in the mid to high single digits in the U.K., despite those factors. Why? Because we've got an advantage position.
We have the only universal fuel card, fleet card in the U.K. We compete with the private label cards that the oil companies have. There's a couple of other kind of mini networks that exist in the U.K. Visa, Mastercard with open loop cards do not capture Level 3 data like they do here in the U.S. Without Level 3 data, you cannot provide a fully functional fuel card solution. We have this great network advantage that is the only universal network in the U.K. If you look at our customer base, about 85%, which is a stat that we love to quote, it has great credentials, 85% of the top 200 fleets in the U.K. are our customers. Massive fleets with 10,000, 20,000 vehicles, et cetera, all the way down to maybe thousands of vehicles.
That gives us a great platform to continue to offer them additional solutions to help grow their business and for us to grow our business. As I said before, EV, AI solutions, value-added services like service maintenance and repair add-ons to the fleet proposition. We have these mature markets that will continue to grow at that kind of level, and then the fast-growing markets growing double-digit, high teens. Give us altogether a kind of a line average for the company. Peter said 9% to 11%. I mean, that's kind of where we aim to be. We do not want to be a drag on the growth prospects of the company, and we are not. But we think we can sustain that.
Corporate payments, and I think of myself, again, I came into this company 10 years ago, not as a vehicle guy, not as a fleet guy, but as a payments guy. What I get excited about in my business is not calling it, frankly, vehicle payments anymore, but it is just part of corporate payments. Vehicle payments and what we do for vehicle payments and fleets is a subset of the spend management solution. It is just in a specific vertical, and it is answering a specific set of questions and delivering a certain specific answer for fleet specifically. But I see us as much broader than that. If you take and overlay the corporate payments capabilities that we have already launched in the U.K. and what we can do with that, I get excited about actually trying to grow above the line average.
That is wonderful. Maybe we could just talk about the health of the fleets. It has been a very choppy macro, geopolitical backdrop has been volatile, to say the least. Fuel prices have been going through the roof. Maybe you could just talk about the overall health of the fleets and sort of how you are positioned as we move forward to the extent that there is more choppiness or even a recovery. Maybe just talk about those different permutations.
Look, I mean, health of the economy is always a good barometer as to the health of fleets and vice versa, given the activity that gets generated by fleets to support the economy. I've been through many cycles. COVID was a very special kind of occasion for fleets and for lots of businesses. Saw the invasion of Ukraine caused another shock a couple of years ago, and obviously the Iran war, another shock in terms of fuel prices. When fuel prices go up like they have this year, for us, it creates opportunity. Why? Because customers or prospects, fleets are looking to save money. They're looking to try and cut their costs wherever possible. It creates demand for our products. We see more sales coming in.
We see more activity online, digital searching, and customers coming to us, trying to squeeze that extra bit of margin from their fleet operations. It gives us an opportunity to sell more and add more value. That is good news. The less good news is obviously, those same fleets are looking to maybe change some of their behaviors. Consume less fuel where possible because fuel prices are high. We do see softness in some industries where you would expect to see, where they are very heavy users of fuel and where they can change behavior. The counter to that, which again is the nice thing about having a diverse kind of offering for fleets is, in Europe that is, it is less relevant in the U.S., is EVs. More activity gets pushed to the EV market.
You have seen sales of EVs rise again after a little bit of a dip pre the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Again, the solutions that we have are relevant to those same fleets in the EV world. We actually, on a per margin basis, per unit basis, make more margin from EV than we do from fuel, which people think that there is not much to be had in EV. There is plenty to be had because the revenue sources are quite diverse.
We see a lot of diversity in the market. Obviously, trucking is more hit than maybe cars and vans. I would say overall it is a challenging environment for our customers. We have had a good year, if I am frank about it, despite all of that, given the opportunities that have emerged as a result of it.
That's great. Maybe we could double-click on Europe, because, I mean, the U.S. seems like it's maybe the market's a little further along. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but-.
You are.
Could you just-.
Good.
We could talk about that. Maybe we could just talk about the competitive dynamics of Europe and, like, who you're competing against, because it seems like in this market, a lot of the big oils have sort of outsourced, in those other markets, not as much. Maybe you could just compare and contrast those two big developed markets.
Sure. I think it's, look, the markets are different, and they've grown up differently. I think what I said before about the Level 3 data piece, if again, if anybody studied fuel cards, you'll know that part of the secret sauce of operating a fuel card business is the ability to capture Level 3 data, so the line-item detail from the fuel transaction, which allows you to digitize the receipt and capture all additional information. In Europe, that's incredibly important because it allows you to capture essential line item detail that not only allows you to digitize a receipt but automate the VAT reclaim. VAT in Europe, on a blended average basis, is about 20%. If you can't capture the data and you can't digitize that data, you're relying on a paper receipt.
If you don't have that paper receipt, you can't claim back the 20%, which is obviously a big deal for companies. If you don't have a fuel card solution, you're relying on maybe 1,000 transient workers, drivers, who come and go, to be smart about keeping those receipts. Clearly, that's not going to work for big companies. So it gives fleet cards an advantage. The second thing that becomes really important is network size and reach. The private label oil company cards tend to have much more limited networks than we do through the acquisitions that we've made over the years. Again, that gives us an advantage over some of the others, and again, depending on the market.
Then thirdly, it's all the controls that we can apply to the product based on the data that we get, that again, others like Visa or Mastercard can't compete with. Unlike the U.S., by the way, where it is more open with Visa or Mastercard. So those give us the structural advantages in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe and in Australia and Mexico as well. The same advantages exist there. In terms of competition, it's the usual suspects. It's the private label cards from the oil companies. It's some networks like DKV and UTA that tend to serve more the trucking side, and very local competitors in very specific small countries in Europe. So, I'd say the competitive landscape has been relatively static. I'd say where it's different is in the EV side, where there's, again, the ecosystem is developed in a different way.
Level 3 data works in a different way. So, we have more competition on the EV side from kind of fintech-type startups. But what they don't have is what we have, which is the fuel piece. So, it gives us those, again, those structural advantages. On your question as to the outsourcing piece, again, it's kind of historic. The U.S. went first many years ago. Shell and Exxon tried this out in Europe. We acquired, probably 11, 12 years ago, acquired a big portfolio from Shell, and were running sales and doing all the program management for Shell, which we still do in Europe, which is a very good business for us. Exxon did the same with WEX. But Europe is quite nationalistic, and the way the oil companies work is very much local decision-making.
You go and speak to Total, or you go and speak to BP, you don't go to speak to one guy at the top. You've got to go to each individual market and have those conversations, and they're quite protective about their positions.
Historically, they haven't wanted to shift and, I guess, give up those portfolios to American companies to run on their behalf, which I guess, in some cases, is understandable. I'd say the next shift, though, which we're seeing, is technology-based. What do I mean by that? Technology is progressing, AI, obviously the need to become compliant with the latest European regulations, and the oil companies don't have the platforms and the technology to keep up with all those changes. Many cases, their processing systems for fuel cards go back to the 1980s or 1990s, so they can't adapt as they would like to adapt. Again, part of my thinking is cyclical. They didn't want to do it 10 years ago, maybe eight years ago. The cycle turns again, new people come into these oil companies, they've got a technology need, they've got other imperatives.
That could give us another opportunity. EVs are way more prevalent than they were eight years ago. That gives us another opportunity, maybe on a different day, to go and pitch to them an outsourcing kind of solution.
Seems like it's more important there to have good technology, given the VAT thing, b ut you haven't made as much progress, and it seems like it might be coming back. Is that sort of a good way to-.
Well, I'd-.
Phrase it? Is it something you are feeling, or is it just a hope?
I'd say it is we are feeling it because we have conversations with oil companies. I'd say the biggest barrier with these big oil companies is making decisions. People shift within those companies. They come for two years, they leave. Eventually, that technology imperative will stop them from taking the next step and from being as competitive and, frankly, complying with regulations. So, at some point, they are going to need to make different technology-based decisions, and that could be choosing a partner like us, and they know us, and we can serve them.
Of course.
Or it could be taking a different path and choosing a different technology platform. But I'd say the status quo for them is only finite in terms of timeline, given what's going on in the market.
Do you think the fintechs have anything in their technology that's more advanced on the fuel side?
The biggest barrier, again, is. Again, I've been around fintechs for a long time, and we partner with them, and some of the innovation that we've seen outside of fleet has been tremendous. And obviously, here in the U.S., there are a couple, like Coast, that are doing really well and have developed good technology. I'd say in Europe, there are fintechs trying the same. What they're missing, though, is what I talked about before, is that Level 3 data and the capability to deliver that and use that and leverage that. The other thing that they're missing, which is, I didn't mention, is what's the other big thing that fleets want from a fleet card? And that's payment terms, cash flow. So, big part of our proposition is, we'll give you X number of days to pay your invoice.
For some companies, that's the lifeblood of their business. If you're a small business, medium-sized business, you need to go from A to B to get paid. You may not get paid for that job for a while. Obviously, you want to delay the payment of that fuel that gets you from A to B as long as possible. We provide those payment terms, and we provide that because we're a real company with a real balance sheet. We do that in corporate payments as well. A lot of these fintechs can't do that. They just don't have the balance sheet to be able to do that. So, even with good technology, they face the barrier of, well, if you want a payment solution from me, you've got to prepay the money, and then I'll provide you with the product.
It gives us a structural advantage as far as the products are concerned.
One more, which is, it would seem like, given there is all these different players in different geographies, it would be a market that is ripe for consolidation and acquisition. Do you feel like there is more acquisition opportunity in those?
In fleet?
In fleet.
In vehicle?
In vehicle.
I'd say the market is, as it is always been, relatively fragmented. The way it works, it is very much local networks or the oil company networks. I'd say we are always active, we are opportunistic in terms of being able to acquire, and I think there are some assets that will come up, and could come up and will come up. I think where we are disciplined is, we want assets that augment our growth trajectory. We do not want to take an asset that is dated, that is not growing because it has got weak technology and weak prospects, and find that it just becomes a drag on our growth.
Yeah.
Where we see the opportunity in markets like in Mexico, or like, say, France, where we do not have a big footprint, but it is a big market, I'd say they are interesting markets. Where it is, again, there are many businesses out there and portfolios out there that just do not tick the boxes for us in terms of our growth aspirations.
Okay. Alan, I'm going to give you a little break. I'm going to go to Peter.
All right.
And let him take a victory lap on Q3 results, because those were-.
Thank you.
Very strong, and obviously the guidance moved higher. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about how much of the upside reflects sustainable operating strength versus other factors like macro, FX, tax. Then, as you kind of talked about the setup each year that you have, maybe just talk about the setup into next year without providing guidance.
Don't worry, I won't do that. If we look back at Q3, I think the indicators of core business strength were 11% organic growth, right. That's what we hold ourselves to. Our corporate payments business accelerated from 16% organic growth to 18% organic growth. It is clear the core is strong. We did also benefit from some macro factors, so that's obviously helpful to the top line, and that flows through to adjusted EPS. I'd say there's a combination of both that played a part in the quarter.
Pleased overall with the performance. It was our fifth quarter of a beat and raise, so a good place to be.
Yeah.
As we set ourselves up for next year, we're in the middle of our budget process. Poor Alan King, my colleague next to me, he's been doing it longer than I have, but we do a pretty detailed process. We're kind of-.
I've heard
Halfway through it. It really speaks to capital allocation, right. I mean, it's a constant conversation of how are different businesses performing, especially as we look at the rotation into corporate payments and where are we going to invest, right. When we think about next year, the setup looks good for us. Organic growth of 9%-11% is what we're sharing with everybody. We'll have about $2 billion of free cash flow to put to work next year. That'll be between buybacks and accretive M&A. The other data point that we shared on the call, that really goes back to the growth algorithm that I described earlier, which I think investors really were excited to hear about, is in our corporate payments business for 2026, we project the sales will be about $0.5 billion .
What we further said is, okay, that $0.5 billion Of sales, the way to think about that is 50% of it actually hits revenue in 2026, and 40% of it hits revenue in 2027. There's some early life attrition and other things that happen that kind of take it down from the 100%. If you take that 40%, that's $200 million. That's over a base business next year where we project to be around somewhere like $2.5 billion. So, I've got seven to eight points already of my organic growth set up for the following year. So, those were really kind of the key points without giving a guide because the macro world is an interesting place today.
Of course.
So, we'll wait to see where that settles out to set up 2027.
And when we think about this tailwind that you have into next year, is that unique to this year, or has that been the case in the past?
It's always been the case. We've just never done a good job, I think, of really explaining it to people. But as we go through the budget process, where I'll fly back to Atlanta tomorrow and then go through for about seven days, right, we will be looking at revenue bridges of how much did sales impact this from last year impact this year? What are going to be your new sales, and how is that going to flow out? Our sales engine is one of our kind of secret sauces of the business, right. So, making sure that we are investing in it appropriately, but we are also getting as much realization as possible out of those sales is critical to the financial success.
Appreciate it. I guess maybe this is a question for both of you. As you think about the momentum you have today, like going into next year, do you feel like it is more or less than years past? You have a lot of irons on the fire, is what it sounds like. I am just thinking about the pluses and minuses, and obviously we talked about the geopolitical and macro backdrop, but as you sit here today looking into next year, like, how do you guys feel about it?
Well, I mean, if you reflect back on 2026, right, the numbers we have kind of put forward for the full year is an out of the park result, right. I mean, the thought is that we are going to have revenue growth of, call it, print revenue growth of almost 20%. We are going to have adjusted EPS growth of almost 30%. To be able to beat that again next year, we are not going to be able to replicate it.
Yes.
Because we obviously had some things like the Alpha acquisition, the Avid acquisition. But in terms of meeting our growth targets to the $50 EPS that we laid out in 2029, we are very confident that if I think about organic growth, let us say it is going to come in at 10%. When I think about profits before taxes, it should be 13% because we have got some leverage in the business. When I get to EPS growth, it should be, call it, 14%-15% before the yield. When I talk about yield, what I am talking about is the $2 billion of free cash flow the business generates every year, plus I have a 3x max on my leverage ratio, but as my EBITDA grows, I will borrow more.
I will take that yield, and I will turn around, and I will either buy back more shares, or I will invest in accretive corporate M&A. That algorithm that gets us from $28 this year to $50 in 2029, that algorithm is intact.
Okay. Alan, any?
I would say is, I mean, looking back over the years, I think we are simpler. When you look at, you say lots of irons in the fire, you are right, but there is still probably fewer irons than there were in the past. I think that helps us because it allows us to be more clear about what we feel is going to work and where we want to place our bets. If I rewind a few years, lots of things had to work simultaneously for us to lift the ship above. I would say, I think feeling, again, outside of the macro, which Peter alluded to, which is a bit uncertain right now. Outside of that, I think we are feeling like those tailwinds, we understand them clearly.
I have one more question before I open it up to the audience. I mean, Corpay has just had a strong track record of making lots of acquisitions and more recently divestitures, right?
Yeah.
As we think about the path ahead, Peter, you could talk about it at a high level, and then Alan, maybe you could talk about it specific to the businesses you oversee, which are a lot. We can just talk, like, where Corpay's going from here.
Yeah, so obviously we've made a very successful rotation into corporate payments. We changed the name of the company about two and a half years ago from FleetCor to Corpay. From a revenue perspective and a results perspective, it's of a sustainable level now that I think we're actually obviously seeing it in the multiple of the stock price, which is super helpful. We're going to continue on that journey. So what does that look like, right. It means from an organic perspective, the 10% organic growth. It means from a portfolio rotation perspective, we'll continue to divest businesses that are on the smaller sides, and not part of that kind of larger advantage scale business. The two businesses we sold this year, PayByPhone and Maintenance, both in Alan's world, were both really good businesses. They just didn't fit the future of the company.
We were able to get a good price for those businesses. So you can expect we're going to execute between another $1.5 billion-$ 2 billion of sales. When we do these sales, we will use that to buy back shares. As you know, we have a 55%+ EBITDA margin, so all our businesses are really profitable. So to ensure that I don't have any dilution from the sales, I have to use it for share buybacks. And obviously, my investors love that because I'm returning capital to them, right. So I think that's a key way to think about the divestiture side. When we go to the acquisition side, $2 billion of free cash flow each year, right. Where do I direct that. What we spoke about on the call is spend management within corporate payments is our focus.
It's not that we don't still love what's happening over in the cross-border side, but we're just kind of at the end of digesting the Alpha acquisition and getting the global bank accounts kind of up and running across the globe. We think really spend management is the place that we want to focus, and we'd actually love to do something global. It's mostly a U.S. business for us today.
The thought of going to the U.K. or Europe, where we've got a great leader like Alan and already building an organic business, or other markets, that's pretty attractive to us.
Alan, maybe talk about that.
Yeah, I think the corporate payments piece is, as I said before, is key for us in terms of focus in Europe in my business. I'd say we're focused on growing and building a business organically, but we're also very much active trying to see what we can buy in Europe. It hasn't always been easy, in terms of valuation expectations historically, things have maybe become a little bit more realistic. So we're looking at what we can buy to accelerate the great opportunity we have. If I look at the U.K. or if I look at Europe, we have today about 200,000 clients in Europe, about 50,000 in the U.K., and then another 150,000 spread across continental Europe. Look at the cross-border business, the FX business, all mid-market companies. They've got about 6,000 customers in the U.K. They've got another 12,000 outside of the U.K.
As I think about building an organic corporate payments business, spend management business, there are people I can go after immediately. I do not have to go open market. We are going open market as well. That gives us a great platform to be able to scale and grow something if we are unable to buy. Obviously, it takes a bit more time, but this year already, I think we have seen growing momentum in the U.K. from that corporate payments platform that we launched.
We are selling cards first to get people through the I think we honestly said on the earnings call. We are now kind of annualizing. We will exit this year at about $1 billion of spend on our cards. That is almost from a standing start 12 months ago. So we are feeling pretty good about our organic prospects. Obviously, buying something would help enormously as well.
Is there a specific capability that you are looking for? Because Alpha brought a bunch of different capabilities for you. I am just curious, is there something you feel like you guys do not have outside of the reach in those markets?
I think in some of the geographies in Europe, I mean, again, Europe is not, many of you will know, it is not one country, right. Every single country has its nuances. So localizing something for Germany or for France or Spain or the Netherlands is not as simple as copy and paste. You have got to do a lot of regulatory work. You have got to do a lot of connectivity work into local payment systems. So it takes a bit of time. It is not impossible. That is the sort of thing that we are after. Hey, can we buy a business that already has done the heavy lifting in terms of market entry? Number one. Number two is, to Peter's point earlier, we are primarily a sales-driven machine. That is how the algorithm works. That is how we continue to grow and grow consistently.
Buying a business, we are not really looking for products per se or capability buys per se, but a business that has in-market presence and that has an established sales machine kind of ticks the boxes that we are looking to tick, given where our footprint is today and what our capabilities are today. That said, if I look at the U.K., we have invested in hiring a brand new sales team. We are scaling it up to, we are doubling it actually over the next couple of months in the U.K., and again, taking sales guys from competitors that already have inbuilt knowledge, that know how to sell the products that we are trying to sell, and they are bringing with them immediate experience that allows us to go more quickly. So, if there is not an opportunity to buy, we will figure it out either way.
Cool.
I think maybe the only addition that I would say to that is we've talked about going left on the earnings calls. A lot of investors have said, "What does that mean?" Our thought process there is just offering more value to our clients. The world of procurement has transformed with AI, right? I mean, the ability of AI to digest data and then come up with results to benchmarkings, to negotiation, et cetera, is a pretty super exciting spot. So whether we buy, buddy, or build, the extension into a procurement offering tied to a commercial card offering, tied to a bill pay, AP automation offering, that's where Corpay, that's where the spend management business will go. We've been spending a lot of time on that particular AI-enabled procurement product as well.
Got it. Well, we've run out of time. Thank you guys very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you.