EV adoption is growing and charging networks are expanding. Yet for a significant number of drivers, the experience of paying to charge an electric vehicle can feel more frustrating than filling up fuel at a petrol station. That should concern everyone involved in driving the transition towards electric vehicles, not just the drivers left staring at an unresponsive charging terminal.
For many drivers, range anxiety has eased as vehicle capability has improved. In its place, a different kind of uncertainty has emerged: the creeping suspicion that charging your car will be expensive, confusing, or both.
What drivers are actually paying
Part of the uncertainty comes down to cost – not just what drivers are paying, but how the cost varies in practice. According to Zapmap, the average pay-as-you-go price at a UK rapid or ultra-rapid charger currently sits around 76p per kWh. This equates to out roughly 22–23p per mile to run an electric car, compared to a typical petrol car at around 17–18p per mile. For the roughly one-third of UK households that cannot charge at home because they lack a driveway or dedicated parking, these public charger prices are not an occasional inconvenience. They are the baseline cost of ownership.
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Too many apps, too little consistency
For many drivers, the challenge does not stop at cost. The payment experience itself is fragmented across different charging networks. EV drivers often rely on several charging apps across different networks, with some reporting they manage five or more just to ensure access to chargers.
Each charging network requires a separate account, with different pricing structures and user interfaces.
EV drivers who pull up to an unfamiliar charger find themselves wondering, “Which app do I need? Will contactless work? What am I actually going to be charged?”
Some networks price per kWh, some price per minute, and others use a hybrid model. Idle fees, session fees, and surprise surcharges add to the confusion customers face. One industry survey found that negative attitudes towards managing multiple charging apps now outweigh the positive ones by nearly five to one.
When it goes wrong, there’s no one to help
Then there is the question of what happens when it all goes wrong. Nearly half of EV drivers report regularly encountering out-of-service charging points. The UK government now requires rapid charging networks to meet 99% uptime, but first-time success rates — whether a driver can actually initiate and complete a charge on their first attempt — often tell a different story.
In an unattended environment, there is no immediate support, no alternative checkout path, and no patience for a failed transaction. A payment failure at a charger does not just frustrate a driver, it could leave them stranded. And unlike a petrol station, where someone behind the counter can override a system error or process a different card, the technology at a charging point either works or it does not.
So what does better actually look like?
The starting point is reducing friction at the point of payment. Drivers should be able to initiate with a contactless payment that works consistently, without needing to download an app or create a new account each time they use a different network.
Beyond that, unattended payment systems also need fallback options such as QR codes, pay-by-text or stored wallet credentials. This means that when one method fails, another is immediately available as a backup. They need the ability to separate the charging session from the payment authorisation, allowing a driver to plug in and start charging while the transaction is processed in parallel, rather than standing in the rain waiting for a terminal to respond.
These systems also rely on clear, upfront pricing before payment is made, and real-time monitoring so operators can identify and resolve issues as they happen, rather than after the fact.
The payments industry solved many of these challenges in other unattended contexts, such as vending machines, parking, and transit. The difference is that much of the EV charging network was built with payments bolted on as an afterthought. What worked for a pilot deployment breaks down at scale.
As a result, payment logic embedded at the device level creates technical debt that compounds with every new site, every compliance change, and every software update. The platforms solving this problem are the ones moving that logic to the cloud and centralising it so that updates, new payment methods, and fixes can be pushed remotely across an entire network without dispatching a technician to every charger.
Experience is the differentiator
The EV charging market is entering a phase where experience is the differentiator. Drivers will gravitate toward the networks where paying is simple, predictable, and reliable.
In this environment, the operators and software providers who get payments right will not just retain customers — they will be the ones the market chooses to scale with. The EV transition will not be derailed by battery chemistry or charging speed. If it stumbles, it will be because the industry failed to make the simple act of paying to charge as effortless as paying for petrol.
Conn Byrne, Executive Director for Integrated Payments, Payroc
