In-person payments

In-person payments let any driver pay at the charger by tapping a card or phone, with no app download and no account. Payment happens on a terminal at the point of charging, and Spirii supports three ways of integrating one. They differ in who supplies the terminal software and who owns what the driver sees on screen.

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Overview

In all three, you manage terminals, locations, chargers, and tariffs in the Spirii platform, and terminal revenue reaches you through Spirii’s billing and payout. Each terminal is also a record in Spirii Connect that names its merchant and the charge boxes it serves. See Payment terminals for that record and what it controls.

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Choosing an approach

Whoever owns the driver-facing flow also carries AFIR and Eichrecht compliance for it: the price on screen, the receipt, and the ad-hoc payment experience. That is the part you hand over when you run someone else’s POS. The wider obligations on a public site, including price transparency and infrastructure reporting, stay with you as the operator either way. See Location configuration.

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Spirii POS

Spirii’s own integration is built around the Payter Apollo terminal. It connects to the Spirii platform over the Spirii POS application and talks to the charger over OCPP, so the terminal and charger work as one unit. You can take it complete, or bring your own acquiring.

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What’s included

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Charge keys at the terminal

The Payter Apollo reads RFID charge keys as well as cards and phones, so drivers can tap their charge key on the terminal to start a session. That matters most on chargers with no RFID reader of their own: one terminal serves drive-up drivers paying by card and fleet drivers on their charge keys. A session started this way is authorised and billed exactly as if the driver had tapped the charge key on the charger itself. The same charge key authentication rules decide whether it’s accepted, and the session is invoiced through charge key billing rather than paid at the terminal. This works in turnkey and PAAS, including on a terminal that serves several charge boxes.

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Stopping a session from the terminal

Drivers can stop a session from the Spirii POS terminal screen, which sends the stop command to the charger over the OCPP link. On a public site that matters more than it sounds: a driver who left their phone in the car, or who wants to see charging confirmed as ended, has somewhere to go that isn’t your support line. A driver who started with a charge key stops by tapping the same charge key. The terminal finds their active session, asks them to confirm, and stops it. It shows no receipt, because charge key consumption is invoiced. See Receipts.

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Set up

Going live with a Spirii POS terminal takes four things. Two of them depend on a third party, so start those early.

• The hardware. A Payter Apollo unit, supplied by Spirii under turnkey, or by you or your charger manufacturer under PAAS.
• A Merchant ID. One per location. Spirii requests it from the PSP under turnkey; under PAAS you bring your own.
• Registration with Payter. Through Connect or the Payter portal.
• The terminal record in Connect, linked to the charge box or boxes it takes payment for.

If drivers will tap charge keys at the terminal, it also has to be set to read them. Check with Spirii that this is switched on for your terminals. See Payment terminal with Spirii POS for the order and the detail.

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Charger manufacturer POS

Spirii integrates with a range of charger manufacturers. The manufacturer owns the terminal and the driver-facing experience, and Spirii runs as the POS back office behind it. Use this where the charger and terminal are already integrated locally, or where you want a specific terminal the manufacturer supports. Settings reach the terminal through the charge box. You set the basics in Connect, price among them, and they are pushed as charge box configuration over OCPP. The manufacturer’s POS may also have a backend of its own that Spirii has no part in, so some of what a driver sees is configured somewhere you do not manage through Spirii. How much comes back varies a lot from model to model. A terminal and POS can sit on the same charging hardware as Spirii and still report very little: a session can arrive without a total price, or without the detail behind it. Establish what a given model actually reports before you standardise on it. The manufacturer handles AFIR and Eichrecht compliance for what the driver sees.

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Third-party POS over OCPI

Spirii also integrates with third-party POS providers over OCPI. These are self-contained cloud solutions, usually built by payment providers themselves. Spirii exchanges location, charger, and tariff information with the provider over OCPI, and that same link starts and stops charging sessions. The provider handles AFIR and Eichrecht compliance for the payment flow.

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Dependencies & limitations

• Spirii POS runs on the Payter Apollo. Spirii’s own integration is built for that unit — a different terminal means taking the charger manufacturer or third-party route instead.
• Spirii’s Merchant ID needs a Payter Apollo running Spirii POS. A terminal on a charger manufacturer’s POS or a third-party POS uses your own acquiring.
• A charge key at the terminal follows the charger’s rules. The terminal adds no access rules of its own. Whether a charge key is accepted, and how its session is billed, is decided exactly as for a tap at the charger.
• A Merchant ID is needed per location, not per account. Spirii requests it from the PSP under turnkey, but the PSP’s own checks set the pace, which is why it is worth starting before the hardware arrives.
• Under PAAS, terminal revenue does not come through Spirii. Funds arrive directly from your PSP, and those sessions are excluded from your Spirii self-billing invoice. See Understanding your payout.
• With another provider’s POS, the driver-facing layer is theirs. The screen, the receipt, and compliance for the payment flow sit with them, and how much session detail reaches Spirii depends on the integration. The terminal is still managed in Connect, and its revenue still flows through Spirii’s billing and payout.
• Third-party terminal sessions produce a statement, not a receipt. That provider took the payment, so the document Spirii produces records the session without VAT details. See Receipts.

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Related

For a driver who does have your app, in-app payments cover the same site without hardware.