How Girteka Equips a 10,000-driver Fleet with Real-Time Spend Control

About Girteka

Girteka is Europe's largest asset-based logistics company, headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania. With a workforce of 15,000+ employees, a fleet of 6.500 trucks and more than 10,000 drivers, Girteka moves freight across the whole of Europe, connecting supply chains from the Baltics to Western Europe, the UK, and the Nordics. Its scale makes it a benchmark operator in European long-haul logistics operations.

Drivers regularly incur operational expenses on the road, such as parking, tolls, minor repairs, and other trip-related costs. Before Payhawk, driver expenses were managed through a combination of advance payments, reimbursements, and paper-based receipt reconciliation.

As transaction volumes increased, this created an opportunity to further automate reconciliation, improve visibility, and reduce manual administrative work.

With more than 10.000 drivers operating across Europe, even routine expense processes involved a significant number of transactions. The priority was therefore to reduce manual work, improve real-time overview of operations, and make the process more efficient for both drivers and Finance teams, while maintaining clear visibility and control.

As Girteka’s operations grew across Europe, the company saw an opportunity to further simplify and standardize management of drivers’ expenses.

The team has evaluated dozens of banks and dedicated spend management platforms against a predefined set of criteria, including ease of issuing virtual and physical cards, spend controls and limits, automated receipt capture, reporting capabilities, accounting and API integrations, and the ability for drivers to request additional funds and managers to approve them directly in the application. Several alternatives performed well in one area but left gaps elsewhere.

For Girteka, the final decision came down to four pillars: efficiency, scalability, speed, and traceability. Payhawk was chosen as a solution bringing those pieces together in one platform: real-time cards availability, spend policies and controls, automated receipt scanning, and an in-app request-and-approve workflow.

Today, around 99% of Girteka's drivers carry a Payhawk card, which is activated when they start a trip. For additional or unexpected expenses on the road, drivers can submit a request directly in the app using a workflow designer. The Transport Manager responsible reviews the request and, once approved, the required funds can be made available for the driver almost immediately.

On the Finance side, today's accounting integration empowers Girteka's teams to work directly in Payhawk, while transaction data stays connected across the company's internal systems. This provides better visibility, traceability and control across drivers spending.

One of the clearest gains is the ability to manage driver-related spending faster and more consistently across large European operations. For example, when unexpected costs arise for the driver on the road, the requests, approvals, and transactions follow a clear process, allowing teams to respond quickly while maintaining visibility and control.



With Payhawk in place, very transaction is captured as it happens, providing a clear, real-time view of spending and supporting informed decisions across Transport and Finance teams.

The same automation extends to bookkeeping. OCR captures the majority of receipt data automatically, supporting a more efficient reconciliation process and giving the Finance function more capacity to focus on high-value activities across the business.



Customer support has likewise proven fast and effective, comparing well with the email, chat, and phone-only models of other SaaS tools. Beyond these operational gains, one of the most significant impacts lies in strengthening the company's performance – equipping drivers with controlled spending while continuing to maintain full oversight, and empowering teams across the organization to operate at scale through a modern, efficient approach.