Europe’s EV revolution is accelerating, but drivers and charge point operators (CPOs) still face a fragmented charging experience. EV drivers must juggle numerous apps, cards, and QR codes, often encountering highly inconsistent pricing, with some stations offering up to 50 different tariffs.
In an exclusive interview with TFN, Cariqa’s co-founder, Issam Tidjani, recalls, “The market was not going in the right direction. We noticed this personally when charging our car and visiting one charging station: depending on the payment method, you end up paying 50 different prices. That realisation came through a personal issue we experienced. In general, EV charging was inaccessible, complicated, and not user-friendly or user-centric — that’s why we created Cariqa.”
Cariqa’s solution is a unified end-to-end payment and pricing platform for EV charging networks. Their infrastructure gives CPOs complete control over pricing, payments, and compliance while drivers finally get what they’ve been waiting for: one clear price everywhere—no more guessing, no more tariff chaos. “It was a market issue that was hindering EV adoption. We saw it as a real barrier for EVs to reach the mass market,” Tidjani adds.
This vision has just been backed by an oversubscribed €4 million seed round, co-led by Contrarian Ventures and Anthemis, with participation from Earth, Anthemis Female Innovators Lab, Golden Egg Check, and Techstars. The funding will be used to scale Cariqa’s platform across Europe and accelerate its mission to make EV charging as fair and straightforward as filling up with petrol.
Three founders, one mission: a fairer future for EV drivers
Cariqa’s founding team brings together deep expertise from fintech, mobility, and high-growth technology. “The three co-founders—Issam, Stefano, and I—met each other at HERE Technologies. We met in the mobility team, specialising in everything mobility, including public transport, EVs, and more. That’s where we connected and decided to build something together,” explains co-founder Tamara Ciullo in an exclusive conversation with TFN.
Their mission is ambitious yet straightforward: to rebuild the transactional backbone of the EV charging industry, ensuring consistency, transparency, and trust for both operators and drivers. “Imagine walking into a supermarket and finding that the price of milk changes depending on whether you pay by cash, card, or which bank you use—no one would accept that. Yet, in EV charging, this kind of pricing inconsistency remains the norm. At Cariqa, we’re rebuilding the transactional backbone of the industry to ensure consistency, transparency, and trust, making the market ready for true mass adoption,” elaborates Tidjani.
The founders established Cariqa after witnessing firsthand how the current system’s fragmentation and inefficiency were hindering EV adoption. Their vision is to give CPOs absolute control over their operations and to guarantee drivers a fair, predictable charging experience, laying the groundwork for a truly mass-market EV ecosystem.
Building a diverse and inclusive team at Cariqa
Diversity is a core value at Cariqa, both in leadership and hiring practices. “We have one of the few female founders in the mobility space, so we have everything,” Tidjani notes. Ciullo adds, “One of the things that was nice for us—one of the first investors that believed in us was the Female Innovator Lab from Anthemis. In terms of hiring, we want to make sure that we don’t repeat what’s already in the industry, which is heavily male-dominated.”
Bonetta reflects on the value of diversity from previous experience: “In my previous life, before starting Cariqa, I was running a team of about 20 to 25 people at its peak at HERE Technologies, and I’ve seen what it means and the effectiveness of having a highly diverse team. We had multiple nationalities, bringing different perspectives in, and you can see that not having a monoculture of people all thinking along the same lines is really what makes a difference.”
For aspiring female founders, Ciullo offers advice: “I think just be confident. I sometimes struggle with confidence, obviously, and I think it’s nice to recognise that you’ve made it this far — we’re at the seed stage now. Sometimes, looking back at what you’ve achieved and presenting yourself as confidently as possible, even when you may not feel it, is important. Other people admire what you’ve done, even when you don’t see it. So really owning what you have achieved and being confident about it is the advice I would give.”
The tech that’s changing EV charging forever
Cariqa’s platform is a technological leap for the industry. “Our technology is a payment layer. We have a single-core platform where charge point operators can edit their prices. That price is propagated to the app, the QR code, and the credit card terminal. That’s how we have one platform that controls the entire pricing system, which then channels through different payment touch points for EV drivers,” explains Ciullo.
Unlike competitors, Cariqa is not an energy reseller. Ciullo continues, “We are not an energy reseller, to put it simply. What you see in the market today is mostly energy reselling—buying and reselling energy. We provide CPOs with a platform that enables them to sell energy directly to end-users. Therefore, we eliminate markups on the energy for the EV driver and give charge point operators control over their price.”
The platform’s core is a unified infrastructure layer that replaces a tangled web of integrations, reducing points of failure by 50%. Operators can manage dynamic pricing, orchestrate payments, and automate compliance from a single dashboard featuring built-in tools for tax, invoicing, and cross-border reporting.
Cariqa’s AI-powered pricing engine, the first of its kind for EV charging, enables CPOs to set and synchronise dynamic, AI-driven tariffs across all customer touchpoints, ensuring both flexibility and fairness.
What’s next for Cariqa?
Cariqa’s fundraising journey has been swift and impressive. “So it’s €1 million pre-seed and €4 million seed,” shares Tidjani. On valuation, the team prefers to keep things discreet: “We would prefer not to share. People can figure it out, but we don’t want to give a specific number.”
The new capital will be used to strengthen the team and further develop the technology. “We have two primary directions. First, we want to continue building the team, as the majority of resources will be allocated to developing our technology. Second, we’ll expand geographically gradually. Currently, our primary reference markets are Austria and Germany, with Germany being the largest. Still, we want to start bringing the technology beyond these two markets across the world,” Tidjani explains.
Looking ahead, Cariqa’s ambitions are clear. “For us, the next three to four years would be to achieve our vision of bringing price transparency and stability to the market so EV adoption can flourish and create the right conditions,” Tidjani says. He adds, “We want to establish ourselves as the go-to EV payment platform for everything EV charging. So, if anyone thinks, ‘How do I collect money from EV drivers?’ We want them to think Cariqa.”
As Europe races toward mass EV adoption, Cariqa is on a mission to deliver trust, efficiency, and transparency, making EV charging as easy as it should be—for everyone. With a clear vision, a proven team, and the backing of top investors, Cariqa is set to become the backbone of Europe’s EV charging payments, powering the continent’s electric future.
