Base2Charge – A B2B charging solution for payment, data & use case flexibility
The Danish company offers its customers charging stations and a platform for a variety of B2B use cases – with flexibility in payment methods, charging setups and end user billing.
Products Used
Payment Gateway & Subscription Management
Region
Denmark
Industry
SaaS & Tech, Utilities
Base2Charge - The charging solution for the B2B sector
Base2Charge is a Danish software company that provides a platform for charging point administration for B2B businesses. Additionally, Base2Charge also sells charging stations for different purposes in the B2B sector.
The three main customer groups are companies, housing associations and municipalities. As such, Base2Charge is unique in the market as it focuses on the needs of B2B customers instead of B2C customers.
With the charging point administration, businesses can decide themselves what electricity provider to choose, whether charging stations can be used for free or at a cost, what pricing a charging station should have, and more. The stations can easily be used via app or key tags.
Base2Charge customers have full control over the location and charging setups and receive fully transparent documentation on consumption, withdrawal status, expenses/income and more. Additionally, they will only pay what their chosen electricity company charges with no hidden fees.
Base2Charge – Pricing transparency as a USP
Especially the price-accuracy when it comes to different electricity providers, tariffs and spot prices is one of the biggest unique selling points of Base2Charge. It makes sure that neither their customers nor users of the charging stations pay too much (or get reimbursed too little).
With electricity prices having become more fluid in the past years and the different pricings depending on the chosen electricity provider, Base2Charge therefore offers a huge flexibility and control over different pricing and revenue models.
“What makes us unique is that companies can buy a charging solution and then use that charging station commercially in public. Anyone can drive up to the charging station and charge their car without needing a subscription or app. They just scan a QR code and pay like at a normal gas station. That way, end users don’t need to make a commitment to our company, they can just use and buy the product.”
Sarah Kim Lassen Grøn
Coordinator for Communications & Projects at Base2Charge
Different B2B businesses require different use cases
Base2Charge realized early that businesses usually had much more complex charging station requirements than B2C customers.
Companies
Companies usually set up charging stations for their company fleets or at their parking lots (e.g. to offer free charging for fleet vehicles and priced charging for guests).
However, there are also cases where employees who have business cars or take a lot of work-related business trips get a charging station installed at their home, connected to their individual electricity provider. Through the Base2Charge platform, the company can differentiate between business and private expenses for different use cases for clean and transparent invoicing.
Housing associations
Housing associations usually want to offer their residents charging stations at optimal prices. They can also offer non-residents the option to charge at a slightly higher price as a different revenue stream.
Municipalities
Municipalities use Base2Charge for their own fleets (e.g. transport, vehicles for public service employees, etc.). However, some of them also want to optimize their infrastructure by offering charging stations at public parking spaces (e.g. train stations, city parking, etc.). They can decide independently whether to just charge the electricity costs or set higher prices for additional revenue.
“We had a solution that allowed for payments with MobilePay, but we needed more. We needed someone who could handle our payments professionally and responsibly. And it was very important that we could link the solution with our own system via an API. We set up a meeting with Frisbii. Initially, we thought that our requirements were too complex but within two hours, we were convinced. A couple of weeks later, we were up and running, it was quite easy.”
John Nyhøj Christensen
CEO Base2Charge
Flexible payment options & easier billing
Payments and access via QR-code has been one of the earliest options that Base2Charge provided users of the charging stations. The QR-code was especially helpful, since not every charging station has a display that can show the necessary payment information.
Since Base2Charge wants to allow users to charge without having to subscribe to a service or download an app, etc., the QR solution was the best way for more accessability.
Initially, payments were made only with MobilePay, a Danish payment option that’s very popular for Danish users. However, many Base2Charge customers also had users from different countries who did not use MobilePay.
With the Frisbii payment gateway, Base2Charge is now able to offer more payment methods that also fit international users.
Additionally, the payment gateway allowed Base2Charge to introduce RFID tags* that replaced manual invoice handling and instead automatically bills customers on a monthly basis.
The results of using the Frisbii payment gateway
- Easy integration of the payment gateway into the Base2Charge platform with the Open API
- More payment options to choose from (such as Visa, MasterCard, Google Pay)
- Easier upscaling with now circa 2000 charging points
- Using RFID tags has cut manual labor in the billing process by approximately 50%
*RFID tags (radio-frequency identification) use electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects (Wikipedia).
“Thanks to Frisbii, we are now able to use RFID tags to automate our billing process for end users which has reduced our manual billing work by 50%.”
Sarah Kim Lassen Grøn
Coordinator for Communications & Projects at Base2Charge