The story
The company traces its origins to A.R. Wright, a coal and later heating oil business in South Portland, Maine. In the 1980s, A.R. Wright began allowing trucks to fuel up without having to pay an attendant by using a post-paid fuel card, leading to the creation of Wright Express Corporation in 1983.
SafeCard purchased Wright Express Corp. in 1994. On February 20, 1996, CUC International acquired SafeCard (now renamed to Ideon) for $375 million. Following CUC's merger with HFS, Wright Express became part of Cendant.
Wright Express went public in 2005. In 2012, it adopted the name WEX, signaling a shift away from focusing on fuel cards and expanding into other payment solutions.
In 2019, WEX opened a new 100,000-square-foot headquarters across from the Ocean Gateway International Marine Passenger Terminal in Portland, Maine. The company continues to have a significant presence in South Portland. WEX is one of 10 founding corporate partners of the Roux Institute at Northeastern University, which leases a portion of the WEX headquarters for its campus.
From Wikipedia’s article on WEX Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7