Electrify America Shifts From Prepaid Accounts to Direct Card Payments
Key takeaways
- Electric vehicle fast-charging network Electrify America is changing how it collects your money.
- Electrify America operates DC fast chargers (up to 350 k W) and Level 2 chargers across the US and Canada, primarily along highway corridors and at retail locations.
- Until now, Electrify America's payment system has operated like a transit card.
Electric vehicle fast-charging network Electrify America is changing how it collects your money. Over the coming weeks, the company will eliminate app-based account balances and auto-reload features, shifting instead to direct credit or debit card billing for each charging session. As someone who frequently charges an EV across multiple networks, I see this as a positive change that should simplify the experience for drivers.
Electrify America operates DC fast chargers (up to 350 k W) and Level 2 chargers across the US and Canada, primarily along highway corridors and at retail locations. It's one of the largest public EV charging networks in North America, with more than 5,600 DC fast chargers at 1,080 locations as of early 2026, a distant second behind Tesla's 33,000-plus Supercharger ports.
Until now, Electrify America's payment system has operated like a transit card. Customers would preload funds into an account, and the app would automatically replenish it with a preset amount when the balance ran low. That model created a friction point that anyone who's tried to get a leftover balance refunded knows well. It wasn't exactly difficult, but it introduced an annoying extra step.