A recharging station for recharging an electric vehicle has a fixed transceiver operable with a local interface and a wide-area wireless interface, wherein the wide-area wireless interface corresponds to a cellular network provider. A user transceiver is activated by a user to send an authentication request to the recharging station via the local interface. A front-end server in a core network of the cellular network provider communicates with the recharging station and the user transceiver. The recharging station forwards the authentication request with an identification of the recharging station to the front-end server, and the front-end server creates a PIN code in response to the authentication request if the identification of the user transceiver is verified. A back-end server associated with the utility provider receives the PIN code and verifies the identification of the recharging station. The front-end server sends the PIN code to both the user transceiver and the recharging station via the wide-area wireless interface, and the PIN code is used to initiate charging.