Hi @Anubis 

Please don’t quote me on this answer - I’m a forum volunteer so I can’t guarantee that this is 100% perfect.

However, I suspect it’s because on PAYG, 99% of the work is done by the meter itself, whereas Charge Anytime requires a billing system to integrate with. Given that a PAYG Meter (or Smart Meter in Prepayment Mode) is the only thing that knows the current meter balance 99% of the time and has limits on how much credit can be on the meter at once, it’s not practical to be hooking up stuff that arbitrarily modifies the meter balance, especially not in ways that breaks beyond the maximum allowed credit limits.

OVO’s Pay Monthly setup does let you treat the system like PAYG however as the balance updates daily and you can do top-up payments whenever you want. It’s like doing Pay As You Go, only without the risk of being instantly cut off for running out of credit.

This is such a good question, @Anubis. 

There might indeed be some technical differences that make things like OVO’s ‘Charge Anytime’ offer incompatible. I’m not sure as it’s a bit too technical for my knowledge. 

What I do know is that there is continued commitment to ensuring OVO prepayment customers get the same opportunities to decarbonise their energy usage and save money on energy costs as OVO’s pay monthly customers. OVO PAYG is still relatively new and there’s lots planned for 2024 and beyond. Ultimately I am confident that OVO’s CEO would agree with me when I say, being on a prepayment energy plan vs a pay monthly energy plan should not limit your opportunities to cut carbon and save money on energy bills. 

When we have more on this in future, we’ll update this and any other related topics.