The Task Force will work with various industry stakeholders to explore how EMV®1 payment technology could help support a secure and seamless electric vehicle (EV) charging payment experience.

As EV adoption accelerates globally, supporting the charging infrastructure to meet growing demand is an urgent priority for industry stakeholders and policymakers across the world. This includes promoting simple and convenient payments at charging points to meet the expectations of EV users.

EMVCo creates and manages EMV Specifications and programmes that enable industry stakeholders to design payment products that will work seamlessly and securely worldwide. Following direct industry feedback, EMVCo is exploring how open payment solutions could help to promote a more consistent payment experience for EV users across charging networks.

Joy Huang, EMVCo Executive Committee Chair, comments: “Today, many EV users are required to sign-up for different proprietary applications or memberships to pay at charge points, which can lead to an inconvenient experience. An open payment approach helps address this challenge by enabling EV users to pay for charging in a familiar and consistent way using their preferred payment method.”

Priorities for EMVCo’s EV Open Payments Task Force include engaging with industry bodies such as CharIN, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Secure Technology Alliance to examine opportunities for integrating EMV Specifications with existing EV charging standards and protocols to support interoperable, open payments. This includes the ISO 15118 ‘Plug & Charge’ Standard, which specifies a digital communication protocol between an EV and a charge point.

The Task Force will also explore the potential for developing dedicated EMV Specifications for EV charging payment products, as well as supporting functional approval and security evaluation processes.

“Consumers globally have come to expect a simple, safe and familiar experience when paying for goods and services in-store and online. The same should apply for EV users at charge points,” adds Huang. “EMVCo has a proven track record of bringing the payments community together to create increased trust, consistency and reliability to emerging solutions, such as with mobile payments. Exploring opportunities to help enable a secure and seamless EV charging payment experience marks our latest initiative to support innovation across the payments ecosystem, and has the potential to further ease adoption of zero emission vehicles.”

Active engagement and collaboration with the payments industry is key to EMVCo’s approach for creating, evolving and promoting globally adopted specifications. Hundreds of industry stakeholders participate as EMVCo Associates and Subscribers to contribute their knowledge and expertise to the development of EMV Specifications, and EMVCo also works closely with global and regional technical bodies and industry associations. EMVCo encourages all parties interested in EV open payments to explore opportunities to get involved.