The UK’s ZEV mandate now requires that 33% of new car sales this year are zero-emission vehicles, rising to 80% by 2030, writes Conn Byrne, Executive Director for Integrated Payments, Payroc. Manufacturers face fines of up to £12,000 for every car sold short of the target. EV adoption is accelerating, and public charging now faces the pressure of mass-market expectations.
Yet while vehicle range, battery technology, and model choice have all improved, one part of the ownership experience remains stubbornly unreliable: the act of paying to charge.
For the roughly one-third of UK households that cannot charge at home because they don’t have a driveway or dedicated parking, the public network is the baseline. If it remains inconsistent and confusing, it risks undermining the consumer confidence on which the UK’s transport decarbonisation strategy depends.
Charging confidence is a net-zero issue
Range anxiety has largely subsided as EV capabilities have improved. In its place, a different kind of uncertainty has taken hold: the suspicion that charging your car will be expensive, confusing, or both.
According to Zapmap, the average pay-as-you-go price at a UK rapid or ultra-rapid charger currently sits around 76p per kWh, roughly 22–23p per mile compared to 17–18p per mile for a typical petrol vehicle. For drivers who depend on the public network, these prices are not an occasional inconvenience but the baseline cost of ownership.
Fragmented payments are an overlooked barrier to adoption
Beyond cost, the payment journey itself is fragmented in ways that discourage mainstream adoption. EV drivers routinely juggle several charging apps across different networks, with some reporting they manage five or more just to ensure access. Each network requires a separate account, with different pricing structures and interfaces.
Some charge per kWh, others per minute, and others use a hybrid model. Idle fees, session fees, and unexpected surcharges add further confusion. One industry survey found that negative attitudes towards managing multiple charging apps outweigh the positive ones by nearly five to one.
When charging fails, there is no fallback
Unreliable chargers pose a particular challenge in unattended environments, where no member of staff is available to resolve a problem. Nearly half of EV drivers report regularly encountering out-of-service charging points. The UK government now requires rapid charging networks to maintain 99% uptime, but first-time success rates often paint a less reassuring picture.
A payment failure at an unattended charger can leave a driver stranded. Unlike a petrol station, where someone behind the counter can override an error, the technology at a charging point either works or it does not.
Making payments work for the energy transition
Open, interoperable, and dependable payment systems are essential to making charging inclusive and convenient enough to support mass adoption. Drivers should be able to pay with a contactless card that works consistently, without needing to download an app or create a new account each time they use a different network.
Unattended systems also need fallback options such as QR codes, pay-by-text, or stored wallet credentials, so that when one method fails, another is immediately available. 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 processes in parallel. Clear upfront pricing and real-time monitoring are equally important.
The payments industry has solved many of these problems in other unattended contexts, including vending, parking, and transit. The difference is that much of the EV charging network was built with payments as an afterthought. Payment logic embedded at device level creates technical debt that compounds with every new site. The platforms addressing this are moving that logic to the cloud, so that updates, new payment methods, and fixes can be pushed remotely across an entire network.
User experience will determine the pace of the transition
The UK now has over 119,000 public charge points, and the network is growing rapidly. But infrastructure numbers alone will not sustain EV adoption if the experience of using that infrastructure remains frustrating and unpredictable. The ZEV mandate is pushing manufacturers towards ambitious electric sales targets. Meeting those targets depends on consumers being willing to buy, and that confidence will depend as much on the charging experience as the vehicles themselves.
The EV transition will not be derailed by battery chemistry or vehicle range. The next phase of adoption will depend less on convincing drivers that electric vehicles work, and more on ensuring the systems around them work effortlessly.
