OCPI is the protocol the EV charging industry runs on. CPOs use it to report to regulators, to roam between networks, and — since the payments module landed in OCPI 2.3.0 — to connect a payment terminal to a charging network.
That module is real, and it’s useful. It defines a clean handshake between a Payment Terminal Provider and a CPO: a terminal object, a pre-authorization tied to a tariff, a start/stop, and a financial-advice confirmation that links the captured amount back to the session. Implement it and a terminal can talk to a charger over a standard.
And then the spec stops.
Where the standard ends
The OCPI payments module standardizes the connection, not the money. It says nothing about the part that actually decides whether a charging business makes or loses money on every session:
- Pre-authorization strategy. The spec models a single pre-auth amount. It doesn’t tell you whether to hold a driver-declared target, do incremental re-auths, or slap one fixed hold on every card — each of which swings decline rates, driver experience, and your cash flow.
- The non-happy paths. Partial captures, refunds of the unused hold, failed finalizations, sessions that drop mid-charge, reconciliation when the charger and the acquirer disagree. The spec gives you three capture-status values. Reality has many more.
- Fiscalization. The terminal expects a fiscal signature it doesn’t have — that data lives in the invoicing system, and there’s no path for it to travel down to the terminal. The spec provides the slots; it doesn’t wire the flow.
- Multi-acquirer, multi-country, multi-currency routing. Out of scope.
- Staying correct, forever. Acquirer APIs change, OCPI versions move, CSMS releases drift. Someone has to keep all of it working.
The handshake vs. the engine
This is the difference between a protocol and a product. OCPI standardizes the handshake and, increasingly, the tax slots. It does not — and is not trying to — be the engine that runs the money.
That engine is exactly what every CPO ends up building, and re-maintaining, themselves. Or it’s what Bolt builds once, for the whole market: the orchestration, the fiscalization data flow, the reconciliation, the pre-auth strategy, across any terminal, any acquirer, any CSMS.
OCPI gets you to the table. The hard part is everything after the handshake.