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Three Essential Ingredients for EV Charging Payment Simplicity

Updated on: August 6, 2025

Key Takeaways
EV drivers want a simple and seamless EV charging experience, and a big part of that is making payment. The three essential elements an EV charging service should provide to deliver EV charging payment simplicity are:
1. A great app that covers EV charging from end-to-end, from searching for the nearest relevant station, to making payment.
2. Support for EV roaming to enable a true “charge anywhere” experience
3. Support for Plug & Charge for the simplest, most secure way for drivers to charge their electric vehicles.

EV drivers want the to be simple and seamless. Although more than 80% of charging in the US, and more than 70% in Europe is done at home and at work, EV drivers have high expectations for when they travel. They want to easily find a charger, plug in, pay, and drive away, using a single unified tool—preferably a single EV driver app that lets them charge and pay anytime, anywhere, on any network, in any country.

It sounds easy—that’s what the fueling experience is like for ICE drivers—but in reality, it’s not. There is a lot of complexity behind the scenes to make this seamless experience happen. For charge point operators (CPOs) and eMobility service providers, your ability to deliver that seamless EV charging and payment experience will depend on three complex, essential ingredients to be delivered by EV charging management software:

A great mobile EV driver app
EV roaming
Support for Plug & Charge technology.

Here’s what to look for when you are evaluating EV smart charging management solutions. These capabilities are also a plus for network operators forging partnerships with site hosts.

1. An intuitive “white label” EV driver app that integrates multiple tools

The first necessary ingredient is an intuitive mobile app (plus “matching” web portal) that works in the same way as the commercial mobile apps we use in our everyday lives. Customized with your branding, it empowers the EV driver with full visibility and control of all EV charging aspects. This includes real-time personalized information about charger locations and availability, billing plans, transactions, and payments.

Drivers go through a one-time subscription process and then just swipe the app each time they need to charge. Payments will then be automatically processed by your back-end billing and payments management system. That system must support complex business models, pricing, revenue sharing, and charging scenarios. The payment system should also accept credit cards, which the driver provides at the time of the one-time subscription registration, and support multiple payment gateways.

A white label app for EV charging payment simplicity

Beyond simplifying EV charging payments, some additional capabilities an EV charging app could offer to provide a seamless charging experience are:

Reservations: a way to ensure the charger you want is available when you get there and avoid charging queues
Voice activation: the hands-free experience of just saying “navigate to the nearest charger” is not only cool and convenient, it’s also safer than having to stop by the roadside to tap “Search” on the mobile app.
Economic charging profiles: When charging at home, drivers are not usually in a hurry and should be able to benefit from incentives that utilities offer for charging at late night hours. They want to get home, plug in and select “Economy” so charging only starts when the rates go down. Of course, they should also have the option to select “Full power, now” if they need to charge up quickly.

2. Support for EV roaming plus your established e-roaming business relationships

The concept of e-roaming, or EV roaming, is very similar to roaming in the cellular telecommunications industry. Cell phone users can place calls wherever they are, even if their “home” network provider does not offer service in that location. Connections are made transparently to the caller, and the multiple network providers reconcile the service charges behind the scene.

EV charging roaming works the same way to deliver a true “charge anywhere” experience. EV owners can charge on the road, across brands, regions, and even national borders and currencies, using a participating “away” provider’s EV charging facilities. The charging transaction is then integrated into the driver’s monthly invoice by way of your back-office EV billing software.

For regional distribution fleets running deliveries using heavy duty vehicles (HDVs), EV roaming is even more important. The high-powered charging stations they need for their heavy frames make en-route charging a challenge. The solution lies in inter-fleet EV roaming agreements enabling their drivers to charge at each other’s depots. Those using advanced EV charging management software can even book a charging slot at a partner depot, while EV charging payments are managed behind the scenes between the partner fleets.

This is a win-win for CPOs, eMobility service providers, and fleets because it offers the flexibility that consumers and fleets want, enabling them to essentially charge anywhere.

Although appearing seamless to consumers, delivering EV roaming services is profoundly complex. It requires that you negotiate service and clearing agreements with other EV charging service providers and select an infrastructure provider, such as Hubject, GIREVE, or e-clearing.net, to execute those agreements. EV roaming also requires that the EV charging management solution you select supports those roaming platforms OR supports OCPI 2.2.1– the Open Charge Point Interface protocol for point-to-point communications.

3. Support for Plug & Charge technology

An innovative technology, Plug & Charge is the simplest, most secure way for drivers to charge their electric vehicles. All drivers need to do is connect their EV charging cable to the charge point, and the vehicle is automatically charged—without the driver having to use a credit card, present an RFID tag, or use a mobile app.

When the vehicle is plugged it, it automatically identifies itself to the charger through an ISO 15118-compliant communications link. When recognized as an authorized vehicle, it is approved to receive energy for recharging, with the charging session seamlessly billed. The ISO 15118 standard ensures all this happens with encryption, decryption and two-way authentication.

Plug & Charge will still require a sign-up process with an EV charging provider, and it will also introduce additional complexity as car manufacturers play a significant role in making this innovation a reality. Although the technology has existed for a while, it must be supported by the charging equipment, the EV charging network’s management software, and by the vehicle. The table below provides just a few examples of EVs that support Plug & Charge in the US and Europe.

US	Europe
Ford Mustang Mach‑E Ford F‑150 Lightning BMW i4 / i5 / i7 / iX Porsche Taycan / Macan EV Lucid Air	BMW i5 / iX / i7 Audi e‑tron GT and Q4 e‑tron / Q6 / Q8 e‑tron Mercedes‑Benz EQS / EQE / EQB Volkswagen ID.4 (ID series) Škoda Enyaq iV

Conclusion

If this all sounds complicated, it is. The fast track to integrating these essential ingredients is to choose an EV smart charging management solution that does it for you. That frees you to focus on building a successful and profitable EV charging business.

FAQs

After entering payment information into a mobile EV driver app when registering for a service, the payment process becomes transparent. When the driver uses the app to charge, the service provider uses a token stored in the app to identify the driver to the payment gateway and authorize the payment process. This process will also work with chargers on partner networks accessed via roaming agreements. The driver can also use the app to access invoices for all charging sessions.

An app offers several benefits to EV drivers. Following a one-time registration process, the whole charging experience becomes very simple.
Search: When needing to charge, the driver uses the app to find the nearest available charger. The app can filter out irrelevant chargers – those that are incompatible with the driver’s vehicle, occupied, or faulted.
Reserve: The app can even let the driver reserve the charger, and then launch a navigation app to help the driver get to the charger site. Once on site, the driver simply connects to the charger and swipes the app to start charging. When done, another swipe to stop charging, and the driver is ready to go.
Payment: Payment is transparently handled in the background using the payment method the driver entered upon registration.
Promotions and loyalty: In addition, through an app, the service provider can keep the driver informed of updates, offer promotions, run loyalty programs and more.
Plug & Charge: Enabling drivers to register for Plug & Charge through the app will enable the most seamless experience available.

A white labeled mobile app offers several benefits to EV charging providers, including:
Brand recognition and customer loyalty: Branding the app strengthens the provider’s identity and promotes customer loyalty. As long as the service is good, drivers are likely to continue using a familiar app.
Rapid time to market: By adopting and white labeling a pre-built app, the service provider can launch quickly with a proven and field-tested solution.
Reduce costs: By using a 3rd party vendor, the service provider does not have to invest in the development and maintenance of the EV charging app.
Scalability and innovation: A white-labeled EV charging is usually built to handle scale, and the EV service provider will benefit from the vendor’s core competency in developing advanced capabilities in the app based on feedback and requirements provided by all of its customers.

EV roaming enables drivers who are subscribed to one network to use their app to charge their vehicles at another network. For example, a driver subscribed to “Network A” can use their EV charging app to charge their vehicle at “Network B.” This improves the charging experience in several ways:
Familiarity and seamlessness: Drivers don’t have to download multiple apps or register with several service providers to charge at their stations. The driver can charge at any partner network using the same familiar app they are used to.
Reach: Drivers have access to many more charging stations than those operated by the network they subscribed to. This gives them much wider geographic coverage, even across international borders, and reduces range anxiety.
Simplified payments: Through EV roaming agreements, drivers can make payment through their one EV charging app. They don’t need to register with and provide payment information to multiple EV charging services. All their invoices are available will be available through the single EV charging account they have with their own service provider.

EV roaming and mobile phone roaming are similar in many ways.

	EV charging network	Mobile phone network
Network	Driver can use any charging station of a partner network	Caller can use the partner’s mobile phone network
Brand	The partner network brand is transparent to the driver – if a charging station is visible in their app, they can use it	The partner network brand is transparent to the caller – their phone just gets registered on the network automatically and they can make calls
Location	Works with any roaming partner in any location – local, regional, and across international borders	Works with any roaming partner in any location. In most countries, cellular providers have country-wide coverage, so roaming is not relevant except for the case of international travel. However, it may still apply in countries that have cellular providers that only have regional coverage such as in North America.
Payment	The driver transparently pays for charging using the same app or RFID token from their home network.	The caller transparently pays for roaming calls through the monthly bill with their own cellular carrier.

The leading platforms that enable EV roaming are:
Hubject: Hubject is the largest EV roaming platform. The company is based in Berlin and has global reach with over 2,750 partners connecting over a million charging points to its platform across 70+ countries.
Gireve: Gireve is based in Paris and is an EV charging roaming hub with hundreds of partners mostly in France and Southern Europe.
e-clearing.net: e-clearing.net was founded as a non-profit joint project between Smartlab Innovationsgesellschaft mbH from Germany and ElaadNL from the Netherlands. Currently headquartered in Aachen, Germany, the platform has about 1200 partners with 445,000 charging points across 25 countries in Europe.

The Open Charge Point Interface (OCPI) protocol is a point-to-point protocol that enables peer-to-peer roaming between CPOs and eMSPs. As an international standard managed by the EVroaming foundation, it promotes interoperability across the EV charging ecosystem providing EV charging services to drivers wherever they travel.

Version 2.2.1 is the latest official release of OCPI. The main improvements over the previous version are:

Support for smart charging
Better handling of charging data records (CDRs) for accurate billing and settlement
Improved connection to charging hubs
Support for calibration laws such as Eichrecht

Plug & Charge is more secure than traditional EV charging methods. It uses cryptographic controls (public key infrastructure – PKI) to ensure secure communications between an EV and a charger using digital certificates for mutual authentication and end-to-end encryption for all communications.

No. Although initial registration for Plug & Charge through your service provider is usually done through a mobile app, once registered, the driver can simply park at the charging station, connect their vehicle, and charging starts automatically.