Charging-as-a-Service sounds like a simple deal: a provider installs chargers on your property for nothing out of pocket, and you collect a share of whatever they earn. Some providers use the same label for the reverse arrangement, where you pay them a recurring fee instead, so the first thing to pin down is which one is on the table. Own and Operate vs. Turnkey vs. Hybrid covers this as one of three operating models. What that article does not have room for is the contract itself, and the contract is where a good-sounding pitch turns into a ten-year commitment you cannot easily undo.
CaaS is not a lease, a revenue-share partnership, or a service contract in any pure sense. It is usually some blend of all three, and which blend you signed only becomes clear when something goes wrong: the provider gets acquired, utilization comes in below pitch, or you want to sell the property. This article is the deep dive on the mechanics: what the provider actually owns, how the revenue split works, what a minimum guarantee is and when to ask for one, how long you are locked in, and what happens to the hardware bolted to your parking lot when the term ends.
What CaaS actually bundles
A Charging-as-a-Service provider supplies the hardware, funds the installation, owns the equipment, runs the network software, and handles maintenance and driver support. The money runs one of two ways. In a host deal, the provider keeps the charging revenue and pays you a share of it, a fixed license or lease fee, or both. In a subscription deal, you pay the provider a recurring fee, and the contract says who keeps what drivers pay. You provide the site; who pays for the electricity depends on the deal. Terms vary just as much: subscription offerings have been sold in one-, three-, and five-year terms, host agreements commonly run five to ten years, and some large networks' standard terms run longer, with automatic extensions.
That structure is why CaaS is attractive on the surface: zero capital, zero maintenance calls, a new revenue line. It is also why the contract deserves more scrutiny than a five-minute sales call gets it. You are not evaluating a purchase. You are evaluating a multi-year business relationship with a company you cannot fire without triggering a termination clause you probably have not read closely.
How the revenue split actually works
Read the agreement for exactly three things: the percentage, the base it applies to, and who pays for electricity.
The percentage. Providers rarely publish their splits, so treat any number in a pitch as deal-specific and negotiable. One industry business profile puts typical host shares in fully provider-funded deals at roughly 5 to 15% of revenue. Where the site host carries part of the cost, the share rises: Blink's published hybrid model, in which Blink pays for the equipment and the host pays for installation, gives the host up to 40% of charging revenue. Some deals replace the percentage with a fixed payment: Blink's fully funded DC fast charging model pays the host through a land lease, and one Minnesota city's draft license agreement pays a flat monthly fee per installed charger plus a bonus for chargers that clear a utilization threshold. The number moves with who carries the cost, capital, and maintenance, so a term sheet that quotes a headline percentage without saying which structure produced it is not comparable to anything.
Gross or net. A percentage of gross session revenue and a percentage of net revenue after the provider deducts platform, payment-processing, and network fees are two very different numbers even at the same stated rate. Some deductions go further: one publicly filed site host agreement splits revenue only after subtracting both processing fees and the host's own electricity cost. Ask for the deduction list in writing, and ask what happens to that list if the provider's own software costs rise mid-contract.
Who pays for power. Deals differ. In some, you keep paying the electric bill and the price drivers pay is meant to cover it with a markup. In others, the provider takes the electric bill on its own meter or reimburses you through a submeter, or your power cost comes out of revenue before the split. Confirm which one you are signing, in writing. If you pay for power, a revenue-share number that looks generous can still put you underwater on a demand-charge-heavy electric bill the pitch never modeled for your actual rate schedule. Pricing Your Charging walks through how that cost floor gets built; ask the provider for their assumed dollar-per-kWh cost, not just their sample gross revenue projection, and check it against your own utility bill.
Minimum guarantees: not universal, but worth asking for
A minimum guarantee (sometimes called a minimum annual guarantee or a fixed lease payment) is a clause that pays you a set floor amount regardless of how much charging revenue the site actually generates. It is not a default feature of CaaS contracts. It shows up in some deals as a fixed lease or license payment layered on top of or instead of a straight percentage split, and it protects you, the site host, from a low-utilization first year or two, the period when a new site's usage is least predictable and most likely to fall short of the pitch.
If a provider's proposal leans hard on optimistic year-one utilization numbers to make the revenue share look good, that is the moment to ask for a minimum guarantee rather than take the projection on faith. A provider confident in its own utilization model should have less trouble agreeing to a floor; one that resists the idea entirely is telling you something about how confident it actually is.
Contract length and the renewal trap
Terms vary more than most pitches admit. Subscription versions of CaaS have been sold in one-, three-, and five-year terms. Host agreements, where the provider funds and owns the equipment, commonly run five to ten years: one publicly filed site host agreement runs five years from the date the chargers go live, and the Minnesota city agreement above runs ten years with two optional five-year extensions. Some large networks' standard terms run longer still: Blink publishes a 13-year standard term with automatic extensions for its fully provider-funded turnkey model and a 9-year standard term with automatic extensions for its hybrid. Longer terms help the provider spread the equipment and installation cost over the life of the deal, but they are a real constraint on you: you cannot easily renegotiate, switch providers, or reclaim the parking spaces for a different use until the term ends.
The renewal mechanic matters as much as the initial length. Automatic renewal is common: the filed site host agreement above renews for successive one-year periods unless either side gives at least 90 days' written notice, and Blink's standard terms extend automatically. It is easy to miss the notice window and get locked into another year you did not intend. Put the renewal deadline on your own calendar independent of the provider's notifications, and negotiate for the shortest initial term you can get, since renewing a good relationship is easy and exiting a bad one on a ten-year contract is not.
Who owns the hardware, and what happens at exit
During the contract term, the provider owns the chargers in most CaaS structures. That is the defining feature of the model: you are not financing equipment, you are hosting someone else's. If a contract says title passes to you, confirm when, because that changes every exit question below.
What happens at the end of the term is negotiable, which in practice means it is whatever the contract says, and nothing if you never negotiated it. The realistic outcomes, in roughly descending order of how much they favor you:
- You buy the equipment outright at a pre-agreed or fair-market price and continue operating it yourself or hand it to a new operator.
- You renew the CaaS agreement, sometimes with a hardware refresh included as part of the new term.
- The provider removes the equipment. Who restores the site is a contract term too: that same city agreement requires the provider to restore the area, with underground wiring capped and left in place. Without a clause like that, you can be left with empty conduit and pavement to repair.
None of these is the default outcome unless the contract says which one is. Get the buyout price, or the formula for calculating it, in writing before you sign, not as a future conversation to have when the term is ending. The same applies to a mid-term exit: what happens if the provider is acquired, goes out of business, or simply underperforms so badly you want out early. A termination-for-underperformance clause tied to a measurable uptime or service-level standard is worth more than any verbal assurance about reliability.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What percentage of revenue do we receive, and is it calculated on gross session revenue or net revenue after platform and processing fees?
- Who pays the electric bill, and what per-kWh cost did you assume when modeling our revenue share?
- Is there a minimum guarantee or fixed lease payment, and if not, why not?
- What is the initial contract term, and does it auto-renew? What is the notice deadline to prevent that?
- Who owns the hardware at the end of the term, and what is the buyout price or formula if we want to keep it?
- What happens if you are acquired, or go out of business, mid-contract?
- What is the maintenance and uptime commitment, and what financial consequence applies if you miss it?
- If the property is sold, does this agreement transfer to the new owner, and under what terms?
Decision checklist
A CaaS contract that never gets this level of scrutiny is not necessarily a bad deal. It is an unread one. The revenue-share number on the term sheet is the easiest thing to compare between providers and the least important thing in the contract; the minimum guarantee, the exit terms, and the renewal deadline are what actually decide whether the deal you signed in year one is still the deal you are living with in year eight.
Last factually verified: October 3, 2026, by opening each source directly: Blink Charging's published business-model comparison (host-owned: 100% of revenue and the electric bill to the host; Blink-owned hybrid: Blink pays for equipment, the host pays for installation, up to 40% of revenue to the host; Blink-owned DC fast charging: Blink pays for electricity, the host receives a land lease) and its Blink-owned turnkey (13-year standard term with automatic extensions; network fees deducted from charging revenue) and Blink-owned hybrid (9-year standard term with automatic extensions) pages; the Los Angeles County EV Charging Infrastructure Training Series, Business Models and Financing (Black & Veatch and S Curve Strategies, 2025), which describes third-party-owned deals paying the host a lease payment plus a revenue share, the provider paying the electric bill in its Charging-as-a-Service and third-party-owned examples, and the subscription form of CaaS in which the host pays the provider a recurring fee; the Charging Station Site Host Agreement between Genufood Energy Enzymes Corp. (GigaEVC) and a site host, filed with the SEC in 2022 (five years from commencement, then automatic one-year renewals unless either party gives 90 days' written notice; net revenue split after processing fees and the host's electricity cost; GigaEVC keeps title to the chargers); the draft Electric Vehicle Charging Station License Agreement between CSG EV, LLC and the City of Saint Anthony Village, Minnesota, dated 2022 and published in a city council agenda packet (ten-year term from the date the chargers go live, two optional five-year extensions by mutual agreement, a flat monthly license fee per installed charger plus a utilization bonus, CSG pays all electricity costs, and CSG removes its equipment and restores the area at the end of the term with underground wiring capped in place); and ChargePoint's ChargePoint as a Service pages (1-, 3-, or 5-year subscription terms; end of sale in the US June 26, 2026, still offered in Canada). The 5 to 15% host-share estimate comes from a single industry business profile (BizBite, undated); no operator we checked publishes its turnkey splits. End-of-term options (renew, upgrade, buy the chargers outright, or have them removed) and the five-year and 10-plus-year term references are corroborated by SWTCH Energy's CaaS explainer (October 10, 2024).
Corrections (October 3, 2026): The revenue-share figures (turnkey host fees in the single digits to about 20%, hybrid shares of 50% or more) were taken from an earlier version of a sibling article and could not be pinned to a current published source; they are replaced with a single labeled estimate and Blink's published "up to 40%" hybrid share. The article said hosts supply the electricity "in most deals" and that the price to drivers already covers it; published agreements and models split this several ways, so it now reads that deals differ. Contract terms were described as most often four to seven years; they omitted Blink's published 13-year turnkey and 9-year hybrid standard terms and a ten-year Minnesota city license agreement, and now read five to ten years for host agreements with longer terms at some large networks, and one to five years for subscription offerings. The previous footer described a Minnesota license agreement as running "two consecutive five-year terms" and attributed it to the City of Savannah, Minnesota; the document is a draft agreement between CSG EV, LLC and the City of Saint Anthony Village, Minnesota, and it has a ten-year initial term with two optional five-year extensions. The removal outcome now notes that some contracts require the provider to restore the site. The article now also notes that the Charging-as-a-Service label covers subscription deals in which the host pays the provider.
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