Unplugging the Middleman: A New API Aims to Fix EV Charging Payments

BERLIN, GERMANY – June 09, 2026

For many electric vehicle drivers, the simple act of charging their car on a public network can feel like a journey back to a more complicated, less connected time. It’s a world of multiple apps, opaque pricing, and the nagging uncertainty of whether a given station will accept your payment method. This fragmentation has been a persistent drag on the EV ownership experience. Now, a Berlin-based company is making a bold claim: it has built the digital plumbing to fix it.

Cariqa today launched its Connect API, a product it bills as the world's first direct payment API for EV charging. The company's ambition is to do for embedded vehicle charging what Stripe did for online payments—unify a chaotic landscape behind a single, simple integration. The goal is to create a system where car manufacturers, fleet operators, and navigation apps can seamlessly integrate charging services, not as a costly feature, but as a new source of revenue. For drivers, the promise is even simpler: transparent pricing, straight from the source.

Deconstructing a Broken System

The confusion at the plug is no accident; it’s a byproduct of the industry’s complex architecture. The ecosystem is a tangled web of Charge Point Operators (CPOs), who own the physical chargers, and e-Mobility Service Providers (eMSPs), who offer charging access to drivers via subscriptions and apps. To enable drivers to “roam” between different CPO networks, large interoperability hubs like Hubject and Gireve act as clearinghouses, settling transactions between the CPOs and eMSPs.

While this system enabled the initial scaling of charging networks, it introduced layers of commercial complexity. An eMSP typically buys access from a CPO at a wholesale rate and then sells it to the driver, often with a significant markup. Drivers using a car’s native navigation system to find and pay for charging are often unknowingly interacting with one of these resellers. The price they pay can be inflated, and the brand they blame for the high cost is the car manufacturer, not the invisible intermediary.

“Embedded EV charging has been built on incentives that don't align,” said Issam Tidjani, CEO of Cariqa, in today's announcement. “Platforms pay to integrate, drivers pay above the operator's actual price, operators lose control of their own commercial relationships, and resellers extract value from all sides.”

Cariqa’s model seeks to dismantle this structure by cutting out the reseller layer. The Connect API allows a “demand partner”—like a car’s infotainment system or a route-planning app—to connect directly to Cariqa’s network of CPOs. The payment flows from the driver directly to the CPO, and the demand partner, for facilitating the transaction, earns a share of the revenue. The incentives, Cariqa argues, are finally aligned.

A New Commercial Blueprint

The most significant shift proposed by the Connect API is turning EV charging from a cost center into a profit center for technology platforms. Traditionally, an automotive OEM wanting to offer in-car charging payments would have to pay an integration partner licensing fees or per-transaction costs. The feature was a necessary expense to remain competitive, but it was a drain on the bottom line.

Cariqa flips this dynamic on its head. By adopting an affiliate-like model, it rewards the platforms that drive customers to the charging network. There are no integration or per-user fees for the demand partner. Instead, they earn a commission on every charging session they initiate. This provides a powerful incentive for OEMs, navigation apps like A Better Routeplanner (an existing Cariqa partner), and fleet management tools to not only integrate charging but to make the experience as seamless and attractive as possible.

This model effectively transforms every enabled car and app into a direct sales channel for the CPO. For the CPOs themselves, who have partnered with Cariqa across its network of over 900,000 charge points, this offers a way to increase station utilization while retaining control over their brand and pricing—a control often lost in wholesale agreements with eMSPs.

Transparency at the Plug

For the end user, the most tangible benefit of this direct-payment model is price transparency. As EV drivers become more savvy, they are increasingly comparing tariffs between different apps and providers. The frustration of discovering that the price displayed in their car’s navigation is higher than the price advertised on the charger itself erodes trust.

Because the Connect API passes the CPO’s tariff directly to the driver without an intermediary markup, the price the driver sees is the price the operator intended. This direct connection is also crucial for unlocking the future of smart energy management. CPOs are eager to implement dynamic pricing—adjusting rates based on the time of day, grid load, or station usage to balance demand. Reseller models, which often rely on fixed contracts, stifle this innovation. A direct API can transmit these real-time price signals, allowing drivers to choose to charge at off-peak times for a lower cost, benefiting both their wallet and the stability of the electrical grid.

Cariqa’s role in this new ecosystem is to manage the operational heavy lifting. It handles the complex web of payment processing, VAT compliance across different countries, e-invoicing, and maintaining the technical connections to a vast and varied network of CPOs. By claiming it can collapse months of negotiations and technical development into a single API integration that takes days or weeks, the company is positioning itself as an essential utility for the next phase of e-mobility.

The initial rollout is focused on Germany and Austria, with a broader European expansion planned. The acid test will be whether the platform can deliver on its promise of simplicity and reliability at scale. If it succeeds, it may well represent a fundamental rewiring of the business of keeping our vehicles moving.