Shell Malaysia And ParkEasy Finally Allow Contactless Card Payments For Charging

Why is the rollout of contactless card payment for EV charging taking so long and why is it still so limited?

I’ve taken my fair share of EV roadtrips to the north and south of Malaysia from the Klang Valley and one of the many obstacles in the way of a seamless journey is payment at charging terminals. There was once I had bought a new phone in Johor Bahru and my banking app needed 24 hours to authenticate the new device before allowing transactions. On my journey back to Kuala Lumpur, I was unable to pay for a recharge of the EV I was driving. It proved to me that an over-reliance on high-tech solutions can make simple things in life unnecessarily complicated.

Today, we’re getting a bit of a course correction, but one that is arguably not good enough. Shell Malaysia and ParkEasy have announced a collboration with Visa to FINALLY enable contactless card payment terminals at Shell Recharge sites at Pavilion locations only for now. Why only Pavilion locations when even the convenience store in my condominium has contactless card payments? They did not say.

It’s a step in the right direction, but clearly more can be done. Maybe enough rich people complained that poor data reception in an underground carpark made paying for charging via an app unfeasible. Wait until they realise that cellular reception can also be spotty along stretches of highway too.

Paying for things with something like Visa’s PayWave is also much quicker and more convenient than paying via an app on one’s smartphone, which may end up requiring the user to register for an account in the process. There’s really no downside to implementing contactless payment for EV charging to the consumer at least. My suspicion is that charging operators are reluctant to roll this feature out because Visa takes a cut of their already not-very-profitable business model and it probably costs the operator to integrate the feature with their connected services.

Anyway, if you’re interested in trying contactless payment at the four Shell Recharge locations, here’s where they are:

Just park at the chosen charging bay, select the bay number on the terminal and tap your credit or debit card on the card reader. A pre-authorisation amount of RM150 will be automatically applied. From 15th January 2025 to 30th June 2025, a 10% cashback promo capped at RM5 per session will apply for Visa card payments at those charging spots. ParkEasy app users will also get a 10% credit rebate when they top up at least 50 credits with a Visa card, capped at 5 credits per rebate.