Anyone can install an EV charger. Running one as a business is a different job, and that job has a name: charge point operator, or CPO. The term gets thrown around loosely, sometimes as a stand-in for "anyone with chargers," so it is worth being precise about what the role covers, how it pays for itself, what EU rules now demand of it, and why the software underneath tends to be the part that trips people up.
What a CPO is actually responsible for
A charge point operator is the company that installs, owns and runs charging infrastructure, whether that is a handful of stations at a retail car park or a nationwide fast-charging network. The job covers the full lifecycle of a charging site: choosing and procuring hardware, arranging installation and the grid connection, keeping stations maintained and online, billing the driver for what they use, and adjusting the network as usage patterns change.
That is a distinct role from a CSMS (the software platform a charger connects to) and from an EMSP, the party that gives a driver access to charge, often across many CPOs' networks through roaming. A CPO needs a CSMS to run its network, but does not have to build one; plenty of CPOs license their software rather than write it. The full split between CSMS, CPO and EMSP is its own topic, covered in CSMS vs CPO: the difference explained. What matters here is that one company can, and often does, hold more than one of these roles at once: a retailer running its own car park chargers is both the CPO and, if it bills drivers directly, the EMSP too.
How a CPO actually makes money
Revenue for a CPO usually comes from a mix of models rather than one. The most direct is billing the driver per kWh or per session, the rate set by whatever tariff structure the site owner chooses. On top of that, many CPOs layer subscriptions for frequent users, and roaming agreements that let EMSPs' customers charge on the network for a fee split between the two parties. Which mix makes sense depends heavily on the site: a workplace charger, a fast-charging hub on a motorway and a residential building all carry different utilisation, different driver expectations and different margins. There is no single number that applies across the board, and treating one market's pricing as universal is a common way CPO business cases go wrong.
What EU rules now require
Since the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR) took effect in April 2024, the CPO role carries specific legal obligations across the EU, not just good practice. Public charging points must accept ad hoc card payment, meaning a driver can pay without an app or subscription, typically through a card reader or a standalone payment terminal for chargers too small to fit one. New public charging points installed since April 2024 must be digitally connected and capable of smart charging. And for any charging point rated 50 kW or higher, pricing has to be transparent and expressed per kWh, not folded into a flat session fee. None of this is optional for a CPO operating publicly accessible infrastructure in the EU; it is baked into what "running a charging network" now means.
Why the software is usually the hard part
Buying chargers and getting them installed is the visible part of becoming a CPO. The part that causes ongoing friction is almost always the software layer underneath: the CSMS a fleet of chargers reports to. Most chargers hold exactly one OCPP connection, configured once at commissioning, pointing at one backend. That single connection is where a CPO's flexibility either exists or does not. If the CSMS is slow, expensive to scale, or simply the wrong fit a year in, moving to another one typically means reconfiguring every charger on site, which is precisely the kind of hardware-touching project most operators want to avoid.
The free CSMS option
Plugchoice removes the first of those two frictions. The core CSMS, charger management, monitoring, cards and transactions, is free for every connected OCPP charger, with public pricing on the optional modules (smart charging, billing) above it. That means evaluating a CSMS as a prospective CPO no longer requires a sales call and a custom quote before you can see what the platform actually does. And because Plugchoice includes an OCPP proxy, the CSMS choice stops being the one-way door it usually is: a CPO can run Plugchoice alongside an existing platform, or move to it fully, without a separate hardware project either way.
