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The Dutch processor Adyen NV and the Israel-based payments platform Nayax Ltd. announced early Monday they are teaming up to support digital payments for electric-vehicle charging stations around the world. The new agreement, which comes as electric vehicles become more numerous and raise a pressing need for more charging stations, also emerges as observers note a requirement for top-level payment services for this burgeoning market.
In what the parties call a “long-term strategic partnership,” Adyen assumes the role of an acquiring bank for Nayax, which will lend its payment and loyalty services to Adyen’s platform. Amsterdam-based Adyen, which has long maintained a U.S. headquarters office in San Francisco, began offering banking services in 2022 and last December said it would serve as the acquiring bank for the global payments platform Klarna AB.
With Nayax, Adyen is developing what the companies call “first-of-its-kind” payments technology that is aimed specifically at EV charging and tuned to support both card-present and mobile transactions, the parties say.
For its part, Nayax says it already supplies payment-acceptance hardware and software for a number of large EV-industry players that have come to be known as charge-point operators. The move to include mobile payments capability represents an “expansion into e-commerce” for the processor, says its chief strategy officer, Aaron Greenberg, in a statement. The expansion “will begin with EV charging and expand into other verticals,” he adds.
While the deal is expected to accelerate growth for Nayax, it poses advantages for Adyen as well, the company says. Indeed, Adyen sees the EV-charging agreement as a pathway to broader markets served by Nayax, says Adyen’s chief commercial officer, Roelant Prins, in a statement released as part of Monday’s announcement.
While the agreement between the two companies is global in scope, some observers see it as instrumental in spurring growth for Adyen, as well, particularly in its North American market. In the U.S. alone, the number of EV charging stations has doubled over the past five years, climbing to more than 61,000.
“EV charging is a massive opportunity right now,” notes payments consultant Cliff Gray, who adds one question the business must answer is mode of payment, which could differ substantially from methods used in conventional gas stations. “How do you pay for that—do I pay as I would when I buy gas or is it on a subscription model?” he asks.
Such questions will have to be worked out over time, but Gray argues the two partners are smart to stress e-commerce as well as physical card transactions. “There’s a lot of markets where it doesn’t make sense to take a credit card. Everything’s on a phone now,” he says.
