Mastercard has announced the launch of the “Sustainable Mobility Program” with the idea of creating simpler payment systems for electric car recharging points, focusing its objective on debit and credit cards but even providing solutions through mobile payment.
This pilot program will begin in Germany, where they will see the improvements to be implemented or rethought necessary for their expansion throughout Europe and the US to develop a single and open payment platform for all public points.
The purpose is straightforward: to make the user independent of each operator’s infrastructure. This will allow them to move around with their car without having to be tied to any monthly payment or commitments, the most benefited being occasional users of this type of vehicle.
But this does not mean that they want to eliminate the operators but on the contrary. Since the program is focused on “operators and providers of charging stations, providers of payment services, fintech, cities, and municipalities, as well as third-party providers in the field of electric mobility” to unify a platform, but of course there are no details about what those conditions would be or what financial limit they would have.
Interestingly, the launch of this program coincides just at the time where Germany, the industry, and the government are discussing the new regulation of charging stations (LSV) where there are issues such as ad-hoc billing (that is, charging without a contract previously held, which will indeed be thrown by the email format) or what payment options should be offered to the customer.