How one miserable charging experience on a snowy night can cost an operator a customer for good
It was 12:47 a.m. on a German motorway.
The snow had been falling for three hours.
Fine grains of ice battered the windscreen as the wipers swept back and forth, barely clearing two blurred windows onto the road ahead.
Martin gripped the steering wheel with both hands. His eyes shifted between the motorway and the number glowing in the bottom corner of the dashboard:
6%.
To preserve what little energy remained, he had already switched off the cabin heating. The warmth was quickly fading, a thin mist was forming around the edges of the windows, and even inside his coat, his fingers were beginning to stiffen.
This should have been an ordinary drive home from a business trip.
Instead, an accident on the motorway had forced him into a detour of nearly 40 kilometres. The first charging station recommended by the navigation system was temporarily closed. At the second, all four chargers were occupied.
Martin decided not to wait. With the battery running so low, he was no longer sure how long he could afford to keep the heating on.
So he drove back into the snow.
More than ten minutes later, the navigation screen finally displayed the words he had been waiting for:
Charging station, 2 km.
Martin leaned towards the windscreen, as if that might make the lights of the service area appear sooner.
5%.
When the blue-and-white charging sign finally emerged through the snow, he let out a long breath. At that moment, he believed the most difficult part of the night was over.
The service area was almost deserted.
Four DC fast chargers stood in a neat row, their screens glowing in the darkness. At least two appeared to be available. Martin pulled into a bay and opened the door.
The wind rushed straight into the cabin.
He hunched his shoulders, stepped into the uncleared snow and walked around to the other side of the car. The charging cable had become rigid in the cold. He needed both hands to lift the connector and plug it into the vehicle.
Snow gathered in his hair and across the shoulders of his coat.
He looked up at the screen, waiting for the familiar contactless-payment symbol to appear.
It didn’t.
There was only a QR code and a message:
Download the app to start charging.
Martin stared at the screen for two seconds, then took out his phone.
The moment he removed his gloves, the wind found its way inside his sleeves. He turned his back to the snow and scanned the code. The webpage loaded slowly before redirecting him to the app store.
Download.
Install.
Create an account.
Verify an email address.
Set a password.
The password needed an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a number and a special character.
His first password was rejected. While he was trying again, a snowflake melted on the phone screen and sent the page back to the previous step.
His fingers were becoming too numb to cooperate.
The verification code failed to arrive. He refreshed his inbox, returned to the app and tried again. When the account was finally created, the app asked for his billing address and card details.
Martin looked over at the car.
5%.
Charging had still not started.
While he waited for the card verification page to load, he suddenly thought about the station he regularly used near home.
There, he simply parked, tapped his bank card and connected the charging cable. Once the confirmation light appeared, he could immediately return to the car.
Charging started. The heating came back on.
The heated seat went to its highest setting.
For the next 20 or 30 minutes, he could drink a coffee, answer a few messages or recline the seat and close his eyes.
The entire process required almost no thought.
Tonight, however, he had been standing beside a German motorway in the snow for more than ten minutes, still trying to prove that he was allowed to buy the electricity directly in front of him.
At 1:06 a.m., the app finally confirmed that his payment method had been verified.
A few seconds later, the charger began to hum. The power reading on the screen started to rise.
Martin did not feel relieved.
He hurried back to the car, closed the door and turned the heating to its highest setting. As warm air blew across his frozen hands, he picked up his phone and sent his wife a message:
“Finally charging.”
Then he looked through the water-streaked window at the charger outside.
“Next time, I’ll drive farther before I come back here.”
The following morning, the operator might have seen a perfectly normal session in its management platform:
Payment successful.
Charging successful.
No equipment fault.
Complete energy data.
According to the system, this was a successful transaction.
What the operator could not see was that it had just lost a customer for good.
The Most Expensive Session May Not Be the One That Fails
When a payment fails, the operator can usually see an error record.
But when the driver eventually manages to charge after an exhausting process, the loss is much harder to detect.
The backend does not record that Martin stood in the snow for 19 minutes. It does not record that he entered his password twice. And it certainly does not record what he said after getting back into the car:
“Never again.”
One charging session may generate a few dozen euros in revenue.
One poor experience may cost the operator all of that driver’s charging business for years to come.
Competition between public charging networks is therefore no longer just about power ratings and the number of locations.
It is also about whether a first-time customer can arrive and begin charging immediately.
AFIR Is Designed to Remove This Barrier
Under the current consolidated text of the EU Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, operators of publicly accessible charging points must allow drivers to charge on an ad hoc basis. In other words, users must be able to access the service without first entering into a contract or becoming a member.
For publicly accessible charging points deployed from 13 April 2024, AFIR introduced requirements covering payment card readers, contactless payment devices and other payment methods. At charging points below 50 kW, secure internet-based payment methods, including specific QR-code solutions, may also be used.
The next major deadline is particularly important:
From 1 January 2027, publicly accessible charging points with a power output of 50 kW or more along the TEN-T road network or at safe and secure parking areas must meet the relevant card-reader or contactless-payment requirements—even if they were installed before 13 April 2024.
This means 2027 is not only a deadline for newly constructed charging sites.
It is also a retrofit challenge for existing charging networks.
But installing a POS terminal is only the first visible step.
A Simple Card Tap Still Depends on the Entire System
The driver sees a straightforward bank card payment.
Behind the screen, the payment terminal and payment service verify the transaction. The operator’s platform manages the tariff and charging session, then communicates with the appropriate charger through OCPP.
The charger executes the start and stop commands and reports its operating status and metering data to the platform. The backend then combines the metering data with the applicable tariff to calculate the final amount.
A payment terminal should therefore not be treated as an isolated hardware accessory.
If payment is approved but the operator’s platform cannot start the correct charger—or if the charger cannot reliably return complete metering data—the driver may still encounter the frustrating situation of having paid but being unable to charge.
A seamless card-payment experience depends on the payment terminal, operator platform, OCPP communication and charging hardware working together.
How Ampax Makes Payment Part of the Product Design
Designed for public DC charging applications, Injet Ampax offers power configurations from 60 to 240 kW, with optional upgrades up to 320 kW. It is suitable for motorway service areas, urban fast-charging hubs, commercial car parks and fleet applications.
Ampax includes a dedicated mounting provision for a POS accessory within the touchscreen interaction area.
This means the payment terminal is not treated as an external device that needs a makeshift installation after the charger arrives on site. The physical space, user position and system connection requirements have already been considered during product design.
Operators can select a suitable terminal according to the project location and payment platform. Injet works with partners including Nayax and Payter to support credit and debit card payments.
Specific functions such as pre-authorisation, payment capture, refunds, receipts and tariff management depend on the payment service and charging management platform selected for the project.
Each Ampax charger can be equipped with its own POS terminal.
Drivers can therefore pay directly at the corresponding charger, reducing the possibility of selecting the wrong charging point or connector.
Ampax supports the full-featured implementation of OCPP 1.6J and is ready for an upgrade to OCPP 2.0.1. It can integrate with third-party operator platforms, execute backend instructions and continuously report charging status and metering data.
Configurations for European projects include MID/PTB-certified meters, providing the operator platform with accurate energy data while also allowing the meter reading to be viewed directly on site.
Ampax does not replace the payment platform, nor does it determine the operator’s tariffs.
Its role is to serve as a stable, open and trustworthy field endpoint within the wider charging ecosystem.
An Injet Ampax charger deployed in an overseas project. The individual POS terminal is positioned below the main interaction area, allowing drivers to pay directly at the corresponding charger. Customer information has been obscured for privacy. The image is intended to demonstrate the physical installation.
If an Older Charger Has No Space for a POS Terminal, Must It Be Replaced?
Not necessarily.
Some older chargers were designed without dedicated space for a payment terminal. Because of the internal structure, enclosure strength and protection requirements, cutting a new opening into the cabinet may not be practical.
But the POS terminal does not necessarily have to be built into the charger.
As long as it has a stable power supply and network connection, it can be installed externally and then integrated with the payment service, operator platform and existing charging equipment.
Retrofitting an older site is therefore not simply a question of where to cut an opening in the enclosure.
Operators must determine whether the payment result can be associated with the correct charger, whether the platform can issue the required charging commands, whether the existing charger provides sufficiently complete OCPP functionality, and whether accurate metering data can be returned to the backend.
Physical installation is only the first step.
What ultimately determines the success of a retrofit is whether the entire chain works smoothly.
A Charging Station May Have Only One Chance to Win a Customer
At 1:32 a.m., Martin’s car finally had enough energy to continue the journey.
He disconnected the cable, returned to the driver’s seat and selected his destination again.
Before leaving, he opened the map and removed the charging station from his list of possible stops.
Snow still covered the motorway.
A few minutes later, the station was quiet again. All four chargers remained illuminated, and the operator’s platform showed that everything was functioning normally.
But some failures never trigger an alarm.
And some lost customers never appear in an operational report.
For the driver, a good charging experience means not having to understand payment platforms, operator backends, OCPP or metering systems. He should be able to take out a bank card and return to the warmth of his car as quickly as possible.
For the operator, a POS terminal should be more than a box installed to satisfy a regulatory requirement.
It is the customer’s first point of contact with the charging network.
And a poor first experience may also be the last.
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