The XL Fuel system is a cost effective, reliable standalone solution for providing secure access to a fuel dispenser. The system assists to control theft, manage fuel costs and eliminate loss and wasted fuel. The XL Fuel system has been designed to avoid the problems that have been observed over a fifteen year period with fuel systems that operate using a central controller. These centrally controlled systems use wired cables between the pumps and the controller to provide communications. By having a cable system the devices are exposed to the environment and more importantly are vulnerable to lightning strike problems. The XL Fuel stores each transaction at the fuel pump recording the time, date, vehicle data, user data and liters dispensed. These fuel transactions can then be downloaded as a batch, at a convenient time, to a USB flash drive. The file on the flash drive may then be opened in Excel or imported into the XL Fuel manager software which allows the user to store the transactions in a database and create reports.