Charge & Drive Blog

SCA in Fortum Charge & Drive

04 September 2019, 14:12 EEST

The SCA (with the 3DS2 method) refers to situations when your card issuer (normally your bank) requires you to perform an extra authentication step by entering e.g. your personal banking codes, use your fingerprint on your mobile device or other multi-factor authentication steps to prove your identity.

Map of EV charging locations in an app

What is Strong Customer Authentication

The Strong Customer Authentication (or SCA) EU directive comes into force from 14.09.2019 and increases the security of electronic payments by requiring multi-factor authentication. Enforcement of SCA across different countries is expected to be gradual starting from September 2019.

When do users authenticate with Fortum Charge & Drive

When saving a credit card in the Fortum Charge & Drive app, the user already completed the credit card multi-factor authentication from their bank. This means that they will not need to re-authenticate very frequently. However, there are some instances where the user may need to authenticate again; for example:

  • If their bank requires it (random security check)

  • If they have used the card 5 times since the last successful authentication or

  • If the sum of the previous payments is over €100

Stripe info

Fortum Charge & Drive uses Stripe as our payment service provider. You can learn more about SCA and its exemptions from here. 

How to know if you need to authenticate

If a user cannot start charging, they should check their app to see if there is a debt waiting to be cleared. This can be seen in two places within the app:

  1. In the charging session history (Profile -> Charging History). The payment will appear in red; by clicking on the red payment, the user can process the payment and continue charging. If there is more than one session in red, each payment will need to be cleared individually.

  1. When they initiate a charging session from the app, instead of “Start charging” the app will prompt you to “Make payment”. After the payment has been cleared,  charging can continue as normal.

What about company or family tags?

There are situations where companies may have multiple RFIDs associated with one “master” account. For example, many RFIDs in company cars which are all associated with one user’s app and credit card. In this situation:

  • It is up to the business manager (or app user) who set up the RFIDs to be aware that they need to clear the payments.

  • This also applies to e.g. families where one credit card may be associated with several tags in different cars.

If the person charging their EV only uses an RFID, they need to be aware that in order to start charging, they should contact the app manager (company or family member who has saved the credit card details to that RFID). After the authentication, the tags will work as usual.

When to contact customer service?

  • If you have problems charging your EV, first check from the app (or the person who has added their credit card to the RFID you are using) to see if authentication is required. This can be found in payment history and from the charger connector (instead of “Start charging” it says “Pay”).

  • If you have authenticated all payments and you still cannot charge, please call customer support.