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Gas pumps are larger transactions, so the credit card fees are less of a hit for the business. A level 2 AC charger is about $1 per hour of electricity, so you're taking huge credit card fees for shorter charges.

Most of the apps have some sort of balance that lets you make one $10 transaction and then spend it on a lot of smaller charge sessions.

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That's an interesting wrinkle on what should be an otherwise tractable. Perhaps the government should subsidize the transaction fees in some way like they subsidize the oil companies.

You must be using an unusual definition of subsidy. Gasoline is heavily taxed just about everywhere.

Anyway shifting around the costs doesn't change the fact that paying ~30% in fees is very inefficient

There’s a solution right in the problem: mandate a single “balance card” that pays all EV chargers.

Not sure why that gets a downvote. We use this solution all over the place. From transit cards to gift cards you pay a single transaction fee to the credit card company so you can then pay 0 transaction fees on the tiny purchases.

It gets downvotes because people don't need stupid card for gas pumps either. They are using credit/debit cards.

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