Fleetcor Takes Greater Stake In EV Platforms

Fleetcor, the global payments platform, has made a couple of significant investments to bolster its presence in the electric vehicle (EV) market. The company has made further investment in the EV charging locator website and app, Zap-Map, as well as acquiring Plugsurf, a leading European electric vehicle (EV) software and network provider.

In the U.K., Zap-Map is widely used by fleet drivers of electric cars to plan journeys around EV charge points to ensure continuity of business trips. Zap-Map says the new £9 million Series A funding round will allow for growth in the U.K. fleet market and in markets outside the U.K.

Fleet users of the Fleetcor-operated Allstar Electric card can add their card to Zap-Map’s mobile app to pay for public EV charging via its payment solution Zap-Pay. Zap-Map says it has 70% of UK EV drivers registered users of Zap-Map.

Tom Rowlands, MD of Global EV Solutions for Fleetcor, said, “We are excited to be investing in Zap-Map alongside Good Energy. This investment will open up Zap-Map’s market leading capabilities to our U.K. fleet customers, further demonstrating Fleetcor and Allstar’s commitment to providing best in class EV solutions to the U.K. market.”

Across Europe, Plugsurfing has developed a proprietary EV charging network with 300,000 charge points, or nearly 80% of all charge points in Europe, along with a mobile app to access charge point locations.

Ron Clarke, chairman and chief executive officer of Fleetcor Technologies, Inc., added, “We’re building a broad set of EV assets to not only support our fleet clients’ needs for public and at-home charging, but also to enter completely new EV customer segments with OEMs and CPOs (charge point operators).”

Plugsurfing serves EV OEMs, CPOs and fleets with its software and network solutions.