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Comment by VBprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, contactless is ubiquitous in the UK – the experience is almost always seamless. The only exception being the odd reader with the antenna in a stupid place (these have gotten less common over time) or when your bank decides to force a pin check.

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How would paying for an EV charge work like this? Would you select an amount of credit in currency (presumably via buttons on the charger?) then tap-to-pay for that amount?

(I believe there are some limitations on tap-to-pay transactions to prevent a merchant presenting the transaction with a different value after actually tapping the card.)

I think a lot of "pay at pump" fuel stations require a full insertion of the card to pre-authorize a large amount, then release it as a partial refund once the amount of fuel dispensed is known.

Would this be a barrier to EV charging, if you need a way to communicate this upfront, or have to effectively replicate out EMV infrastructure on totally unmonitored terminals with PIN readers (and likely the next card skimming scandal brewing)?

Also, how would contactless-only work for cards that get soft locked to be inserted for a PIN check? Would there be a way for EV chargers to be exempted from this? Or would people end up stuck and unable to charge as there's no available place with a PIN reader they can use to unlock their contactless payments?

They generally pre-auth for either £20 or £40 and then update the amount post-transaction.

In terms of PIN check, the card is just declined with an appropriate error message because you can’t insert it and the next time you use a contactless machine it asks for the card to be inserted and a PIN entered.

For petrol (gas) pumps in the UK it generally auths either £1 or £99.

Makes sense and matched my understanding of the pay at pump preauth for a fixed amount.

I guess the issue then becomes relying on contactless (only) without the hardware for full EMV with PIN, as then someone whose card has been used contactless one too many times can't charge, and potentially ends up stuck there.

It does feel like contactless is a good convenience measure, but probably isn't ideal as the only mechanism on a reader for charging infrastructure.

Unrelated to this, but not being able to initiate charging without internet access (for online auth of cards, and the ones that can only be used online) also is likely to become an issue in rural areas, as well as give quite a few resilience issues if cloud infrastructure isn't available, or internet backhaul from the area is disrupted. Even once power is restored after a storm, if comms are down (like with Storm Arwen), this doesn't sound ideal for EV charging...

I only have experience with Shell, Morrisons, and Tesco pay-at-pump stations. In all of those, you have to physically insert your card and type in your PIN; contactless does not exist.

What's a large amount? I haven't inserted my card at Costco for a very long time now. Just tap.

If the pump pre-authorizes an amount (many non-Costco gas stations I go to make you choose an amount to authorize) it simply never captures more than was actually used.

Now why would any of this be fundamentally different for EVs? You have a rough gauge for how much "fuel" i.e. "juice" you need, pre-authorize enough money but only capture what actually got used. Done. Why do EVs need to be special?

Pay-at-pump is ubiquitous here in New Zealand, I don't think I've seen a station without it for years. This may be because around 90% of all retail transactions are done with payment cards here.

It's easy. You select the max amount (up to NZ$200), tap your card, and it's done. Pick up the right fuel nozzle, refuel, and go. Exactly the same can be done on EV chargers.

The process card-side is not a charge-and-refund as refunds have fees to the merchant. Rather it's a pre-authentication and finalisation. Pre-auth holds the funds for a set time (determined by the merchant agreement with the bank) and the vendor can finalise the charge up to the pre-authentication amount. Most hotels and car rental places do this for security deposits as well, if they don't charge or explicitly cancel your bank will release the fund hold at the end of the holding period.

Public transport transactions (where the reader is directly on the ticket gate) are exempted from the soft lock, so maybe EV chargers could be too. At least for small amounts.

That makes good sense to exempt those kinds of readers from the soft lock. And given that's possible, it would likely make sense for some similar kind of leeway on EV charging.

Not that there's likely to be any real repercussions in many places given a lack of criminal enforcement around theft/fraud, but EV charging requires the user of the stolen card to stick around in a given area to charge the car, so it's likely lower risk than other places where a stolen card can be used for a large transaction in a short period of time.

I imagine you'd eventually get some people going around offering people "cheap" EV charges for free (for cash), and then tapping a stolen card on the reader, but there's always going to be someone trying to exploit stolen cards in innovative ways.

I'm not sure how it works at the protocol level, but I've been using contactless payments at gas stations here in the US for years now. You just tap to pay before you start pumping, then after you're finished you get charged for the amount of fuel dispensed.

It’s ubiquitous in Australia as well. I haven’t carried a wallet in almost 5 years. My credit card, driver’s license, and other important cards are all digital.

I'm increasingly finding that my phone is detected while I'm still moving it towards the scanner, and it complains that my phone moved too fast. Then I have to wait like a schmuck until something resets and I can do it again.

I want to echo this. When contactless is ubiquitous there are pretty much no problems.

I don’t know if I agree. It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America, but we have these problems still.

Besides dumb inconsistent terminals, the main thing holding it back is (A) customers don’t use it because they either don’t know it’s much faster than our garbage chip readers, or they have been burned by hunting for the right spot to tap. And (B) even the clerks don’t use it because until about this year there was a significant fraction of cards out there without NFC and who wants to hunt for the logo instead of just always shoving it in the (stupid slow) chip reader. There still might be plenty if you count debit cards which I never use but are very popular.

Sometimes I try to use the tap-to-pay. When I try, more often than not, I cannot get it to work, and then I use the chip anyway.

So usually, I just use the chip to save time.

Yes, this is precisely what I think many people do. Because they are frequently punished for trying it by being made to look foolish. We all roll our eyes when someone in front of us can't seem to master the trivial task of completing a purchase, and in that moment, we are dismayed to realize WE are that person right now!

> It’s exceedingly rare now to find a place which doesn’t accept contactless in America...

Lowe's and Home Depot? Walmart, still?

Companies still hoping to silo people into their own apps or antiquated payment method, which might give them a slight cc processing fee reduction that boosts their margins... at the cost of being a usability nightmare for anyone who doesn't shop there frequently. I expect that frequent shoppers will live with whatever a store does, and set up a custom app, if any, or accept using a physical card.

It's easy to see that their approach is petty, because Costco, which has fanatical customers and is members-only—there are no casual infrequent shoppers—got on board with nfc (card and smartphone) payments years ago. If any business could've gotten away with having their own app and special payment processing deals to save money, it's Costco.

It's very odd, as this has been working smoothly in the EU for around a decade, depending on the country. It's so reliable that you can pay for bus/metro/train tickets in London (since 2014) and many other cities directly at the ticket barrier [1 for photo], which would cause problems if cards were failing or slow.

The only time I'm confused is when there's an unusual card reader, usually a low-budget all-in-one type with a touchscreen, as it's not always clear where the NFC reader is. This is maybe 1-2% of transactions.

Every so often a machine makes the "dur dur" noise and I have to use the chip and my PIN. I'm not sure if this is every Nth transaction, or after spending ¤X. Either way, it's to avoid a lot of contactless payments being made if the card is stolen. (And maybe this is irrelevant in the USA, without PINs?)

"8 out of 10 card payments now contactless in the Nordics" [2]. 54% in the whole EU [3], only 34% in the USA [4].

[1] https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-articles/1153...

[2] https://www.nets.eu/Media-and-press/news/Pages/8-out-of-10-c...

[3] https://data.ecb.europa.eu/blog/blog-posts/contactless-payme...

[4] https://ktvz.com/stacker-money/2023/08/01/american-consumers...

Ah, you're right. I forgot about HD which surprises me every time I visit. TBH I have knuckled under for Walmart, which I shop frequently, by using Walmart Pay on their app. I agree that for frequent shoppers it's well worth it, but useless to someone off the street who isn't used to it.

I as a frequent shopper just like the way I can scan my code at any point and then push one button to check out, and that they allow credit cards to back it. For a while before its launch I think it was rumored that Walmart Pay would require an ACH or debit, which would have made it a hard no for me.

I still think that we've seen major progress. For instance, the huge Kroger chain got on board sometime in the past 2 years after being NFC or Apple Pay laggards. CVS a couple years before that, I remember them being particularly prickly about never taking Apple Pay and they came around.

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