Gov't finally got their act together and have now mandated that all new chargers must accept a standard payment card withou any fuzz.

Hopefully they'll make that rule universal in a not too distant future.

I don't think it's a technical challenge. I just don't think any of the charging networks are content to only sell the electricity - they do everything they can to get users to download an app so they can aggregate and sell user data as another source of income.

From a user point-of-view, of course EV chargers that could work just like a gas pay-at-the-pump system would be preferable, but that hasn't been mandated, so that hasn't happened.

The credit card fees are also relatively high for small transactions (it's usually just about $1.20 for me to top up my PHEV battery at the chargers near my work). So the apps prefer to get you to "load" 10 or 20 bucks into the app at a time, and then debit your app account for each charge.