Best credit card for EV Charging

As Malaysia moves toward its low-carbon policy targets with more stringent compliance requirements, electric vehicles are becoming more popular in 2024, with many electric vehicles introduced to the local market. This has led to the establishment of more charging stations nationwide, with players like Shell Recharge, Gentari, ChargeSini, KioskEV, and many more. While using charging stations, although you typically only need to pay for the charging fee—similar to paying for fuel in ICE vehicles—charging an electric vehicle can take several hours. Therefore, additional costs, such as parking fees or coffee you buy while waiting for your car to charge, may arise.

In this article, we will explore the best credit cards for EV charging, so you can earn cashbacks or rewards when you use your credit card to pay for charging fees.

What MCC Does EV Charging Belong To?

Before we show the best credit cards for EV charging, we need to understand the Merchant Category Code (MCC) that classifies merchants for EV charging. Visa and Mastercard created a new MCC, MCC5552, in 2019 for electric vehicle charging spend. However, after reviewing most credit card terms and conditions, product disclosure sheets, and marketing information, we found that MCC 5552 is often not listed as a qualifying MCC for rewards or cashbacks.

Nevertheless, marketing information from multiple credit cards, such as CIMB Petronas Visa Infinite, CIMB Petronas Visa Platinum, and Maybank MyImpact Visa Signature, lists EV charging as an MCC that qualifies for cashbacks. We want to make a disclaimer here that, since EV charging is still new and growing, and most credit card products were designed before the appearance of EV charging stations, the terms and conditions may change rapidly. We should expect to see more credit card products explicitly covering EV charging payments.

Petrol Credit Cards versus EV Credit Cards

Petrol co-branded cashback credit cards are sometimes associated with EV charging spending for several reasons. First, major EV charging players such as Gentari and Shell Recharge are owned by PETRONAS and Shell, respectively. Second, the purpose of recharging an electric vehicle is similar to fueling a car: to make the vehicle move again. Therefore, petrol co-branded credit cards have been extended to cover EV charging, which is beneficial.

The CIMB PETRONAS Visa Infinite credit card offers 12% cashback on EV charging, capped at RM60 per month if your monthly spend exceeds RM4,000. The CIMB PETRONAS Visa Platinum credit card and Maybank Islamic PETRONAS Visa Gold credit card both offer 8% cashback on EV charging, capped at RM50 per month, with the former requiring monthly spending of over RM2,000.

Using Duithub’s reward estimator, for a heavy EV charging user who probably spends RM1,000 per month, the best card is the RHB Shell Visa credit card, which rewards 5% cashback (12% if your statement total exceeds RM2,500). However, although Shell has Shell Recharge EV charging services, the terms and conditions of the RHB Shell Visa credit card do not cover rewarding MCC under EV charging or mention rewards for spending at Shell Recharge.

Sustainable Credit Cards

One theme associated with EV charging is sustainability. Issuing banks started releasing sustainable credit cards in 2023. The Maybank MyImpact Visa Signature credit card gives 1% cashback for EV charging, with a monthly cap of RM35, while the Public Bank Visa Signature credit card is a green card that gives 10 green points for every RM1 spent on EV charging. The green points work similarly to the Public Bank air miles and VIP points. For the Public Bank Visa Signature credit card, every 10,000 green points equals 1,000 Enrich Miles. Thus, spending at green merchants using the Public Bank Visa Signature credit card offers a decent 1 Mile per Ringgit conversion rate.

Bank Partnership with EV Charging Operators

On May 24, CIMB announced a collaboration with JuiceUp to create the first contactless payment specifically for EV charging. This means EV owners just need to bind the card with the JuiceUp ecosystem, and the payment would be automatically processed if they use CIMB credit cards and debit cards. CIMB cardholders also enjoy 15% off EV charging spend if they charge at JuiceUp as part of this collaboration.

Summary

In this article, we presented the top credit cards for EV charging to help you maximize your rewards. Typically, the same co-branded credit cards for petrol are applied to electric vehicle charging, but we anticipate that more credit cards specifically targeting EV car owners will emerge in the future. These might not just be in the form of sustainable cards but could also be co-branded cards between issuers and EV operators, regardless of whether they are PETRONAS or Shell. More general credit cards might also include the EV charging MCC, covering spending at EV stations not just for charging but also for parking and retail purchases.

We didn’t cover some cards that might also benefit from EV charging, such as the Maybank Mercedes Visa Card, which only applies to Mercedes Benz EV owners—a still small number. However, we foresee that co-branded cards between issuing banks and EV car manufacturers might become available in the future if EV cars continue to become mainstream.