Understanding EV Charging Payments with Patrik

Summary: As the Product Manager for Payments at Spirii, Patrik highlights the challenges drivers face with EV charging payments, such as inconsistent pricing and complex payment methods. He explains how Spirii is addressing these issues by developing innovative, user-friendly solutions that aim to simplify and unify the payment experience. Looking ahead, Patrik discusses the importance of industry collaboration and emerging trends like Plug&Charge, which are set to shape the future of EV charging.

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Can you tell us a bit about your role and your experience working in Spirii?

As a Product Manager for Payments at Spirii, my role is to shape the product offering of our platform within this area. This includes payment for charging, but also everything that happens behind the scenes such as our commercial offering, financial services, billing, receipts, fiscalisation etc. It’s a broad role and the vision of our team is to create the most trusted and seamless payments and financial services within the EV space.

Working at Spirii is a great challenge – I'm at the centre of the largest shift in mobility in a long time, and the decisions I make help shape the direction of the entire industry. No day is like another and there are always difficult problems to solve.

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In your experience, what are the main challenges drivers face regarding payment methods for EV charging?

For drivers, the main problem has long been the opaqueness with which payments happen. Either you have an app with good visibility of pricing, how it (potentially) changes over time, and can view the status and price of your charging session remotely, or you have a physical RFID tag with next to zero visibility of the price and the charging session.

Even in the early days of payment terminals, the visibility of price was lacking, and charging is still a bit like playing roulette. Some examples of this are the charging sessions we’ve seen reported in the news, where complex tariff structures without clear communication led drivers to be charged hundreds of Euros for a single charging session.

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How does complexity in payment methods affect the overall EV charging experience?

At face value, this causes drivers to need to learn new behaviour each time they want to charge their car in public. Different platforms, CPOs, OEMs, PSPs, and terminals work, look and feel differently, and there are few overlaps. At one station, perhaps you see the price before you tap on a screen, and then it’s gone. At another the price is printed on a piece of laminated paper. Sometimes you must plug in the car first, then authorize the charging session.

Somewhat exaggerated in certain regards perhaps, but it goes to show that as an industry we have a long way to go in creating a good driver experience when paying for charging.

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What solutions are currently being developed to address payment challenges?

At Spirii, we take great care in advocating for driver and CPO experiences. We aim to offer products and services that make EV charging available and accessible for all in order to accelerate the transition to sustainable mobility. We welcome the AFIR regulation and believe its spirit is in the right direction, despite some blunt formulation in places.

Availability of “commonly used payment methods” will be paramount to creating accessible public charging.

At Spirii we are working closely together with charger manufacturers, terminal manufacturers, payment service sroviders, drivers, and CPOs to simplify and, where possible, unify the experience within our ecosystem.

Some examples of this include a redesign of our app, aligning our tariff structures with commonly available standards (OCPI), and of course a close integration with Payter payment terminals to provide a Spirii Point of Sale (POS) that integrates seemlessly with our entire platform offering.

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Can you share any innovative payment methods or technologies that your team is working on?

Our main focus today is to ensure a convenient and integrated solution that is simple to use for CPOs and drivers alike, focusing on the experience at the site and the operations behind the scenes. We will support the major payment cards and wallets like Apple/Google Pay, but we are not currently investigating any specific Alternative Payment Methods (APMs).

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How do these payment solutions enhance the convenience and reliability of charging for EV drivers?

At Spirii, we believe payments need to be founded on trust, which is why we have a strong focus on quality and user experience.

The POS interface is designed to provide the right information to the driver at the right time and to guide new users to start charging with ease. Collaborating with an established partner with decades of experience in building hardware for in-person payments like Payter ensures that we minimize errors and unforeseen behavior when drivers pay for charging.

Having a solution deeply integrated within the Spirii ecosystem also allows us to surface information about payment method availability within our own app and through third-party navigation providers such as Apple, Google Maps and more.

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How important is industry collaboration in standardizing payment methods for EV charging?

I don’t think we will ever standardize payment methods for EV charging, nor should we. We should aim to create unity and make the experience simple for drivers and CPOs alike, but we also need to be mindful of local differences in culture and approaches to payments alongside regulation. That’s also why collaboration is paramount - because within countries, it’s important to make the experience standardized.

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Are there any notable partnerships or collaborations your team is part of to improve payment systems?

Our team is constantly in talks with CPOs, charge point owners, regulators, tax authorities, EV drivers, Charger manufacturers, payment service providers and more. Based on what we learn from these conversations, user research, and legal developments, we aim to create a scalable, trusted platform that accelerates the move to sustainable mobility.

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What future trends do you foresee in the EV charging payment landscape?

Plug&Charge is a big trend that has not yet arrived as a standard for managing payments. There’s a lot of work being done on enabling this technology and I personally believe we will see very interesting ideas pop up over the coming years.

Another area is around pricing. The AFIR regulation mandates transparent and fair pricing. On top of this, many CPOs and players within the ecosystem will start to mature and want to offer differentiated pricing to different customer segments and user groups.

Finally, there will be many local developments and enablement of APMs (Alternative Payment Methods) also for EV charging. For example, in the Nordics, we have Swish / Vipps / MobilePay, PayPal and other digital wallets are prevalent within the EU and cryptocurrencies are also gaining more trust and acceptance globally.

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How is your team preparing for these future developments?

By collaborating closely with payment service providers and pushing the industry and regulatory discussion towards a sustainable environment where trust is paramount but innovation encouraged. With the recent acquisition by Edenred we also have increased capabilities from Edenred Paytech to operate within payments and delight our customers.

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What motivates you to keep innovating in this space?

The knowledge that our smallest decisions today can have a butterfly effect on the mobility industry of tomorrow and that our work matters.

We’re always open to feedback and discussions! If you have questions about how Spirii solves your needs as an EV driver, CPO, fleet manager etc. don’t hesitate to reach out!

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