Clinton, it goes back to at least as early as 1986 when the company I was marketing manager for was developing the first australian multi product fuel pumps and card controlled pumps.

The problem with card activated bowsers and pumps is legal, not technical.

‘(1)Simply put, your bank and credit card balances are private confidential information, protected by law. Hackers would love your details.

(2)‘They petrol station (bowser) operator doesn’t give credit.

(3). You want fuel, but the bowser doesn’t know how much you are going to take and the bank is prohibited by privacy laws from “telling” electronically, the bowser what your bank balance, credit card balance and credit limit are. Furthermore, the bowser can’t take back the fuel you’ve just loaded or detain you and call the police. Forget about real time internet access for authorising every litre in advance.

This creates a commercial problem. It is compounded by the fact that the bowser may not be online. The dangerous solution to that is to download everybody’s credit card status, details and limits to the bowser once or twice a day. That creates another privacy and security problem.

I forget how we solved it, but it was a risk sharing solution, not a technical one, that satisfied the law. I’m not sure what the current solution is, but I would guess BP doesn’t have the smarts in its bowsers or the back room systems to easily take credit cards yet.

Thanks Sunfish.

That would explain why, when I use a credit card rather than a ‘carnet’ card, the bowser requests a ‘pre-authorised’ amount and a PIN, and there’s a bit of a delay while the machine has a discussion over the electric interweb with my bank. The process seems to be one through which the bowser checks whether your credit card limit covers the cost of what you say you’re going to buy.

(I recently battled with a bowser that had a very aged and dim LED display, and was surprised to see a ‘pop up’ on my phone from my online banking app, saying I’d spent $3,000 on AVGAS, my having hit the zero one too many times on the bowser keypad. Fortunately the actual final debit reflected the very modest amount of AVGAS that I actually put in my very modest aircraft.)

Suppliers other than Air BP seem to have dealt with this issue.

Liability. They don't want you accidentally loading Jet A into your Bonza or RV. They issue Jet A cards or Avgas cards. When asked why the other companies take credit card: Don't care, that's their business, we do what we do.