Credit Card Payments Now Accepted At Rubicon EV Charging Stations – A First In South Africa

Join daily news updates from CleanTechnica on e-mail. Or follow us on Google News!

Final Up to date on: 2nd April 2025, 07:20 pm

The South African electrical mobility house is beginning to present indicators of great traction in a number of areas. Gross sales of battery-electric autos (BEV) breached the 1,000 models per 12 months mark in South Africa for the primary time ever in 2024. Final 12 months, 1,257 BEVs have been bought in South Africa, up 35% from 929 models bought in 2023. Within the general market, 515,712 autos have been bought in South Africa in 2024. Which means BEVs solely had a market share of 0.24%. That’s nonetheless very low! With solely 3,212 BEVs bought since 2018, its clear to see that gross sales of BEVs have been gradual in South Africa in comparison with related auto markets world wide. On the plugin-hybrid electrical automobile (PHEV) facet of issues, 737 PHEVs have been bought in 2024, up 100% from 368 models bought in 2023. Nonetheless, PHEVs solely made up 0.14% of complete automobile gross sales in South Africa in 2024. Let’s take a look on the high promoting PHEVs in South Africa.

Though these are small figures in contrast with related markets world wide, it reveals the market has some promise. One solution to encourage and speed up adoption of electrical autos is to have good publicly accessible charging infrastructure within the main facilities in addition to on well-liked freeway routes. It will go a great distance in easing one of many essential issues potential EV consumers typically have, and that’s vary anxiousness! Having enough charging infrastructure is an efficient begin, however there are additionally different important pillars to this together with, good community uptime, and general reliability of the chargers making up this charging community. Nice buyer expertise is subsequently important, together with when paying for charging periods.  Because of this Rubicon has added a brand new choice for patrons to make funds in a person pleasant method utilizing probably the most generally used bank cards.

South Africa now has over 400 public charging stations together with ultrafast chargers, with additional enlargement deliberate for 2025. With electrical automobile charging infrastructure in South Africa rising at an excellent tempo to help the increasing new vitality automobile market, this new fee choice offered by Rubicon and companions has come on the proper time.

Right here is the background to this new growth: Rubicon needed to discover a solution to make funds at its charging stations extra user-friendly to pave the best way for development within the electrical transport sector. Rubicon says that beforehand, EV charging stations in South Africa used a closed-loop system, which means that prospects wanted to arrange pre-funded wallets and use particular playing cards to cost their automobile. This created a collection of additional steps within the charging and fee course of, and restricted interoperability throughout totally different charging stations. There was a necessity for a extra environment friendly, seamless fee course of with out requiring bodily computer systems at every charging station because of issues like theft, energy administration, and upkeep.

With a purpose to handle this problem, Rubicon collaborated with EFT Company, Visa, and Verifone to permit prospects to make use of main bank cards at Rubicon charging stations, with out having to pre-fund wallets. Rubicon says that by way of the combination of EFTCorp’s fee platform with Verifone’s UX700 class-leading unattended fee system, prospects can now use main bank cards at Rubicon charging stations, with out having to pre-fund wallets. Moreover, terminals can now be managed remotely utilizing cloud-based expertise.

Right here’s the way it works:

Plug in: The person connects their automobile to a Rubicon charging station.

Pre-authorization: As soon as plugged in, the Verifone UX700 fee system on the station prompts for fee. The system then reserves a predefined quantity on the person’s bank card earlier than the charging begins.

Charging: As soon as the pre-authorization is accepted, the charging course of begins.

Fee: If the person stops charging early, the ultimate fee displays solely the electrical energy used, and the remaining reserved funds are launched. If the charging course of continues past the preliminary reservation, the system incrementally will increase the reservation quantity, including funds to the preliminary pre-authorization as wanted, and the ultimate quantity is settled when the automobile is unplugged.

To make sure the success of this challenge, the fee terminals needed to be managed remotely with out native computer systems for the primary time. Rubicon provides that Verifone deployed its performance to help distant cloud-based terminal management, and introducing incremental estimated authorization and lowering pre-authorization maintain occasions necessitated particular customizations with the banking associate. And all these numerous techniques, together with Rubicon, Verifone fee units, and EFTCorp’s built-in expertise stack and switches, needed to be synchronized.

This ground-breaking answer, with the proof-of-concept section already launched at a number of websites in Johannesburg and Cape City, will enable prospects to pay with main bank cards at Rubicon charging stations for the primary time.

Buyer expertise is the whole lot! Due to this fact, with over 60% of transactions in South Africa now contactless, open-loop options enable drivers to cost their electrical autos at any public charging station while not having an account or membership, making a seamless fee expertise. Enabling contactless funds in any respect public charging stations is a vital step in making EV possession extra accessible. That is important. Now we have lined points round this earlier than in different markets, the place on the time EV drivers generally had to battle with a lot of different apps, charging setups, and payment methods on a single road trip.

Rubicon says that the implementation of incremental pre-authorization for dynamic consumption-based billing is a primary for South Africa. It’s a terrific instance of how collaboration can result in vital innovation, with complicated applied sciences being built-in to ship a streamlined and user-friendly expertise for patrons. Although it required complicated operational modifications, the result’s the alternative for the end-user — a significantly simplified expertise. It’s a singular answer for the EV charging sector and an necessary step for sustainability in South Africa, as a result of the better it’s to entry and use EV charging options, the higher the adoption of electrical autos will probably be.

It’s nice to see that South Africa’s electrical automobile charging community is rising and fee choices geared toward enhancing buyer expertise are being added. It will enable drivers to have a extra seamless driving expertise across the nation. Here is a video of one such driveeven with an EV with a comparatively small battery, all enabled by a few of these chargers from Rubicon and companions.

Picture courtesy of Rubicon