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Coupon Management

Coupon Management

Last updated on March 10, 2026

Intro

eMSP operators seek ways to make their commercial offering more attractive to their drivers and to steer regular usage of their product. With that in mind, it is a differentiating factor that eMSP can engage drivers in loyalty schemes, which typically encompass partnering with 3rd party entities (e.g. supermarkets). GreenFlux addresses this market need by introducing coupon functionality.

GreenFlux current technical solution comprehends two independent coupon functionalities:

  1. EV Portal (Front-end) based Coupon functionality
  1. API based Coupon functionality
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Please note that the two functionalities above ARE NOT interoperable. This means that as an eMSP you should rely on either one option or the other. A coupon is a free, discounted, or retail discount applied to a certain driver. Coupons can be in the form of various units such as money, sessions, % discounts or meter value.  When the coupon value reaches zero, the token it was applied to will return to the regular retail cost (exception here for meter-value-based coupons, as detailed later). The application of a coupon occurs at the driver level, hence, if a driver possesses an RFID, the coupon is automatically applied. Coupons may also be targeted towards a certain CPO (internal CPOs only), meaning they are targeted for a specific CPO only.

Here are the pros and cons of each functionality, over a set of different characteristics:

Characteristics
EV Portal based coupon functionality
API based coupon functionality
Target audience (type of operators)
Suited for smaller eMSP or with lower customer base of up to tens of hundreds of drivers.
Suited for large scale eMSP, with big customer base of thousands+ drivers
Additional Technical Integrations
Not required/possible. EV Portal works as a stand-alone solution.
It is a must. All available operations are only supported through API integration. Typically, customer's CRM would work as the driver for coupon handling.
Operational support
EV Portal acts as the gate to perform all operations, including issuing of coupons, checking coupons and state of use etc.
Customer needs to build their own front-end or integrate with a CRM system to provide operational support.
Onboarding guidelines
It is readily available once your eMSP setup has been concluded and set as operational. In EV Portal, go to the left pane: EMSP --> Payment methods --> Coupons
You should liaise with your CSM (/Ops) to enable this functionality in your platform API(s)

Types of Coupons & Properties

  • Meter Value Coupons: Free charge is granted for the first X minutes of every applicable charging session. (only available in API based coupon functionality)
  • Money coupon: Discount on the retail cost.
  • Discount coupon: A % based discount is applied to the retail cost.
  • Session Coupons: A coupon for a free session.

Information regarding Coupons:

  1. General Characteristics
      • Unique Identifier: Each coupon possesses a globally unique identifier.
  1. Creation and Usage: Coupons can be created at any time. If a coupon is created for a driver during their charging session, the coupon may already be applied to the running session. It is not recommended to create a coupon exactly at the end of the session to avoid datetime precision problems.
  1. Expiration: Coupons created during a session remain valid for future sessions until they expire. Coupons expire based on their specified expiration date.
  1. Coupon Application Order: Coupons are applied in a specific order:
      • Meter-value-based coupons. (only available in API based coupon functionality)
      • Session Coupon
      • Discount coupons (only the highest one is used if there are many).
      • Money coupons (consumed in order of expiration).

Coupon Handling:

  • GreenFlux always considers all active coupons when looking for coupons to apply.
  • It is not possible to avoid using coupons altogether or skip specific coupons.
  • Coupons can be changed or canceled via the API, through the PATCH a coupon endpoint.
  • When there are several tokens under a certain driver, the coupon will be used in chronological order of token usage, i.e. if token no. 3 is the first to be used, then coupon(s) will be used for that session with token 3

Coupon Types and Characteristics

  1. Balance Characteristics:
      • The balance of each individual coupon is considered in order of expiration.
      • Coupon balance cannot become negative.
      • If the coupon balance covers the entire retail cost, the after-coupon retail cost is zero.
      • EV Portal based coupon functionality:
        • Available on EV Portal.
  1. Meter-Value-Based Coupons (MVB-Coupons) (only available in API based coupon functionality)
      • Behavior:
          1. MVB-Coupons grant free charging for the first X minutes of every applicable charging session until the coupon expires.
          1. Similar to discount coupons, nothing is deducted from the coupon itself.
      • Meter-Value Considerations:
          1. Clock-aligned meter-values are necessary for MVB-Coupons,
      • Time-of-Use Billing:
          1. MVB-Coupons require Time-of-Use (ToU) billing to be enabled on chargers - check configuration steps in this article to know how to implement: Time of Use Tariff (greenflux.com))
      ⚠️

      Meter - value based coupon: Be aware that not all charge station support clock aligned meter values, thus this is a coupon type that you need to carefully assess its usage. GreenFlux advice extensive ACCeptance testing prior to production deployment of this coupon type. Check the last dedicated section on this article for further considerations on implementing these coupons

  1. Money Coupon
      • Characteristics:
          1. Money coupons provide a discount on the retail (driver) cost.
          1. Can be used until the specified expiration date.
      • EV Portal based coupon functionality:
        • Available on EV portal.
  1. Discount Coupon
      • Characteristics:
          1. Percentage-based money discount on retail cost.
          1. Can be used until the specified expiration date.
      • EV Portal based coupon functionality:
        • Available on EV portal.
  1. Session Coupon:
    1. Characteristics:
      1. full session(s) will be granted for free, provided the coupon is within the expiry date and there is still sessions remaining in the balance
    2. API based coupon functionality - Available API endpoints:
      1. POST a session coupon (greenflux.com)
    3. EV Portal based coupon functionality:
        • Available on EV portal.

Coupon Information in the CDR.

  1. coupon_usage
      • The coupon_usage property is an array that captures detailed information about each coupon used during the charging session. The structure of the CouponUsage type includes information such as:
      • Coupon ID
      • Coupon type (e.g., meter-value-based, discount, money)
      • Coupon amount or value applied
      • Expiry status of the coupon
  1. coupons_compensated_costs
      • The coupons_compensated_costs property represents the total monetary value of coupons redeemed during the charging session. This provides a consolidated view of the cost savings achieved through coupon usage.
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Future considerations not supported at the moment for API based coupons:

  1. EV Portal Integration
      • Capabilities: To be supported in future phases.
          1. EV Portal allows changes to coupons:
          1. Increase or decrease balance.
          1. Change expiration date.
          1. Both options can be used to deactivate a coupon.
  1. Inter-CPO Coupon Sharing: Coupons shared between different CPOs

Advanced working principles of Meter-Value-Based Coupons (only available for API based coupon functionality)

As defined above, these coupon type requires quite advanced configurations in place. Let us look at the following requirement "Clock-aligned meter-values are necessary for MVB-Coupons":

  1. This is as aspect you can only control on your own chargers, and some don't even support this. Thus, a user with this coupon type may not be able to use whenever chargers don't have these configurations in place. E.g. when users go to roaming chargers, they (most likely) won't be able to use these coupons, meaning this coupon type won't be applied to those sessions.
  1. Having clock aligned meter values means that the charger sends meter values every 15 minutes, aligned with 00:00:00 time stamp (this is the definition of clock aligned meter values).
  1. Considering all the required configurations for a meter value-based coupon, the following condition defined the applicability of a coupon:
    1. A meter value-based coupon is applied to all the segments within a session that a meter value is received and provided the combined duration of those segments is lower or equal to the meter value Duration + Tolerance combined.
    2. Let us check an example:
      1. Pre-conditions:
        1. a certain driver was issued a meter value-based coupon with the following characteristics:
          1. duration = 25 minutes
          2. tolerance = 1 minute
        2. there is a session from a token from that driver in a charger with all required configurations in place
      2. Example:
        1. Session took 35 minutes, as follows:
          1. Start at 15:08:00
          2. clock aligned meter value received at 15:15:00
          3. clock aligned meter value received at 15:30:00
          4. Stop at 15:43:00
        2. From that we obtain the session's several segments:
          1. Segment 1: 15:08:00 --> 15:15:00 (duration = 7 min; cumulated duration = 7 min <= duration + tolerance)
          2. Segment 2: 15:15:00 --> 15:30:00 (duration = 15 min; cumulated duration = 22 min <= duration + tolerance)
          3. Segment 3: 15:30:00 --> 15:43:00 (duration = 13 min; cumulated duration = 35 min > duration + tolerance)
        3. From the above, we get that segments 1 and 2 are included in free charging, meaning 22 minutes of free charging and the remaining are calculated as per the retail cost.
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