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Comment by why_at | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I agree having a different app for each station sucks, but I don't really understand how plug-and-charge would solve this. For anything that does support plug-and-charge, don't you still need to register the payment method somewhere in advance?

Unless we have some universal payment processor which all the charging networks agree to use I will still need register through an app or something when I encounter a new brand of charger on a road trip.

It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the stations to accept a more universal payment system like credit cards. I think there is already a law like this in California IIRC.

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Tap & Pay still requires you to fiddle with a station and slows you down. If you are plugging in at home (which is our target market), the fewer interactions needed the better. Imagine every time you get home you need to take your wallet out, tap the machine, wait for some 3rd party api to talk to the charger in the dimly lit basement, and then and only then you can leave. This is like 30 seconds of your day wasted.

Plus, ultimately we want to make charging as cheap as possible and having to pay the $.30 interchange fee each time a user plugs in would add a ton of overhead to our cost model.

Surely the interchange fee can be negotiated for volume? Or even mandated by law. When I tap my credit card to buy a 1$ bus ticket I doubt the interchange is keeping 30 cents?

There are transit systems that have made this work smoothly, you just walk up to a gate, tap your card as you walk through, so I can't imagine the barrier is technological unachievable. Seems like similar frequency and $.

It takes something like half of a second for my Apple Pay Amex/Visa to let me through the barrier in the London Underground, and the complexity they have to deal with for fare calculations is quite something too.

This is true. Apple Pay has been something we're keen on adding

The fare isn’t calculated on the spot though, a base amount is authorized and then only charged later. Not that the plug needs to figure that out immediately but it’s worth noting.

> It seems like the real solution is a law which requires the stations to accept a more universal payment system like credit cards.

No shit, Sherlock? In the UK a lot of fuel pumps have credit/debit card readers built in, and if not cards are accepted everywhere for payment already. But yes electric charging companies here are still wierd about accepting such standardised payments, and we did just introduce a new law about it [0] promising "most" but not all chargers will accept cards.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-to-make-charging...

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