Just go onto Zap-Map and set the 'Payment' filter to 'Contactless debit or credit card'.

 

As above, Zap Map filters are the only way. You can't just say a specific network supports it because it tends to only be certain units that have it. The Polar/BP Network for example have contactless on their 'Ultracharge' branded rapids, but not the ones made by other brands, nor on their AC posts either.

It's also worth noting that you will often find chargers are working, but the contactless credit card terminals on them aren't.

Maybe your friend should get an account with one of the cards that have various roaming agreements? Chargepoint, Shell, and Octopus Electric Juice are 3 examples of these where you can have a single card that will work on a number of different networks.

 

As above, Zap Map is the easiest way.

She can rely on Instavolt, Osprey, Gridserve Electric Highway (not the old Ecotricity units) as big networks that are 100% contactless.

Do warn her to expect hefty pre-authorisations on her credit or debit card, especially annoying if she has a couple of failed charging attempts. They will get cancelled off after a time when the correct charge is billed, but they can add up

 

Zap map - click on info and it will tell you if it takes contactless - most do now. Even electric highway. I was at a BP pulse one this weekend and it wouldn’t accept contactless (it had the function but wasn’t working) so just used the app and it worked fine - there are only a few now I need to avoid - maybe insta volt?

JJ

 

- there are only a few now I need to avoid - maybe insta volt?
JJ

Instavolt do contactless and are usually very reliable.

 

Do be aware that some contactless debit card payments have been rejected at the EVSE after the card owner has made a number of previous contactless payments. Am not up to date with the details, but there may be a limit to how often your bank lets you do this, before you have to "re-set" their trust in your card by entering the PIN again. And EVSEs don't generally have a keypad to enter this ... so it's a good idea to have a range of payment methods, even if it means struggling with an app.

 

Or set up Apple/Google Pay on your smartphone.
No limit on how many times they can be used for contactless payments, AFAIK, and much higher threshold for the amount of a single transaction.

 

I think the banks only allow a certain total of contactless expenditure before requiring a PIN entry. If doing a long run with several Rapid chargings, when buying lunch or a coffee, choose PIN entry when paying for the food so as to reset the 'contactless' total. This is not helped by some Rapid chargepoint backends holding onto significant amounts of pre-authorisation until the backends can get round to telling the banks the final amount to deduct.

 

They do but they usually don't apply that to contactless-only payment units, and pre-authorisations don't apply to it.

As long as your spending is within your usual spending pattern you're very unlikely to ever be asked for your PIN.

 

Another vote for using your phone. I switched to using Apple Pay, rather than use a contactless card, with the increase in the use of contactless over the past year. Not sure what the revalidation limit is when cards need to be used with the PIN, but it's not that high a number of transactions, certainly under a dozen I think. There's no limit with Apple Pay, and I assume the same's true with Google. I'd not wish to be caught out at a charger only to find that contactless wouldn't work because of the transaction count limit having been reached.

 

IME the number of contactless transactions before PIn entry seems to vary between banks. I've also seen issues where some POS terminals (Marks & Spencer) won't reset it and just reject contactless and PIN transactions after the limit has been reached.

 

I agree that having a backup method of payment such as the app is good practise, I am hopefully never likely to be caught short as I have 3 separate accounts with a contactless card, so one of them should always work even if the one I intended to use doesn't.

 

Out of interest, how long would one expect to wait to see an Instavolt charge hit your bank account. I have 3 charges at Instavolt that have yet to hit my account, one of which was last Friday. The most recent was Tuesday. I would have expected them all to have hit by now. The 2 prior to that came out within a day.

 

Do you have any credits from referrals?