Every CMS vendor in India will tell you they support OCPI. Far fewer can explain what happens after a driver from a partner app plugs into your charger — who gets paid, when, and how you reconcile it against 40 other roaming partners without a finance team drowning in spreadsheets. That's the part that actually determines whether roaming adds revenue or adds overhead.

What OCPI actually does

OCPI (Open Charge Point Interface) is the protocol that lets charging networks talk to each other, not just to their own app. Where OCPP connects a charger to its own CMS, OCPI connects one network's CMS to another network's CMS (or to a hub sitting between many networks). The result: a driver using Network A's app can find, start, and pay for a session on Network B's charger, without Network B ever needing to build a relationship with that driver directly.

For a CPO, this means your chargers become visible — and usable — to every driver on every connected network, not just your own app's install base. In India that currently means exposure to drivers on networks like Kazam, ElectricPe, BOLT, Tata Power, Statiq, and others, depending on which hub or peer connections your CMS maintains.

Hub model vs peer-to-peer

OCPI 2.2.1 supports two connection patterns:

Peer-to-peer — your CMS integrates directly with each partner network's CMS. More control, more integration work per partner.

Hub model — you connect once to a roaming hub, and the hub handles routing to every network on it. Less integration work, but you're dependent on the hub's coverage and reliability.

Most Indian CPOs end up on a hybrid: a hub connection for broad reach, plus a few direct peer connections with the highest-traffic partners where the commercial terms matter enough to negotiate directly.

Where roaming actually breaks

The protocol handshake is the easy part. Three things determine whether roaming is actually profitable rather than a support-ticket generator:

CDR accuracy

Every roaming session generates a Charge Detail Record — energy delivered, duration, tariff applied, session ID. If your CMS and the partner's CMS disagree on any of these (a common failure mode when clocks drift or a session ends abnormally), settlement disputes follow. This is invisible in a demo and very visible at month-end reconciliation.

Settlement latency

OCPI defines the data exchange; it doesn't mandate how fast money actually moves. Some hub/partner combinations settle weekly, some monthly, some only after a manual dispute-resolution window closes. A CPO with thin margins per session needs to know this before signing, not after the first settlement cycle.

Session-level pricing overrides

Your own app's tariff and a partner's negotiated rate for their drivers are often different. A CMS that can't apply partner-specific pricing automatically means someone on your ops team is manually adjusting rates per roaming partner, per site — which doesn't scale past a handful of partners.

What to ask a CMS vendor before you count on roaming revenue

  • Which specific Indian networks are you actually live with today, not just "OCPI-compatible with"?
  • Is CDR issuance and reconciliation automatic, or does it require manual matching?
  • What's the actual settlement cycle — T+1, weekly, monthly — for roaming revenue specifically, separate from your own app's UPI settlement?
  • Can pricing differ by roaming partner without manual intervention per session?
  • What happens when a CDR is disputed — is there a defined process, or is it ad hoc?

Why this matters for network-wide revenue

CPOs who roam well typically see a meaningful traffic uplift purely from partner-app visibility — drivers who were never going to install your specific app still land on your charger because their existing app shows it. But that uplift only becomes revenue if settlement is reliable enough that you trust the numbers without re-auditing them every month. Roaming that generates sessions but not clean, timely settlement is a wash at best.

Massive's CMS runs OCPI 2.2.1 with automatic CDR issuance and reconciliation across 11 Indian roaming networks, with dashboards for revenue share and settlement per partner. See how OCPI roaming works on the platform →

Ready to Add Roaming to Your Network?

Tell us about your current CMS setup and which partner networks matter most to you. We'll walk you through the OCPI 2.2.1 integration and settlement flow.