SWTCH Energy Launches SWTCH Tap™: One Tap EV Charging That Works Even Offline
April 10, 2026
SWTCH Energy has announced the launch of SWTCH Tap™, a new capability within the SWTCH Cortex platform that lets drivers start a charging session with a single smartphone tap — even when a cellular signal is unavailable.
Underground garages, parkades, and remote commercial sites are notorious dead zones for cellular connectivity. For EV drivers in these environments, the result is a frustrating gap between pulling up to a charger and actually getting a charge started.
SWTCH Tap eliminates that gap. Powered by SWTCH Cortex, the company’s intelligent charging platform, the technology uses NFC to identify the charger and the driver’s account instantly—bypassing menus, app downloads, and cloud handshakes. The driver taps, sees a 1-click “Start” page, and charges.
“The biggest hurdle to a great driver experience is often the connectivity burden at the site,” said Carter Li, CEO of SWTCH. “With SWTCH Tap, we’ve streamlined the process to a single tap while ensuring the charger works every time, regardless of network status. By utilizing local authorization and UID caching, the charger can make decisions in real time without waiting for a cloud handshake. When a driver pulls up with an empty battery, they should be able to charge, no matter what the network situation is at the time.”
Charging in Every Scenario
SWTCH Tap is designed to deliver a reliable experience across three distinct connectivity scenarios:
- Full Connectivity: When both the charger and the driver’s phone are online, the tap provides a faster, one-click start—no QR codes, no looking up station IDs, and no waiting for a signal.
- Phone in a Dead Zone: If a driver has no cellular signal on their phone, the charger recognizes their SWTCH account via NFC and authenticates the session locally.
- Total Site Outage: In a complete network outage, the system uses local intelligence—via SWTCH Nexus edge computing or cached user IDs on the charger itself—to authorize the session. Transaction data syncs automatically once connectivity is restored.
A Multi-Layered Approach to Uptime
SWTCH Tap is the latest addition to a broader reliability stack within SWTCH Cortex. Together with SWTCH Nexus, which provides local edge computing for site-level decision-making, SWTCH has built a multi-layered fail-safe that ensures the connectivity never produces a charging gap for drivers or a service gap for property owners.
SWTCH’s approach leverages a standard OCPP framework to cache authorized users locally, meaning the charger retains the ability to authenticate sessions even when entirely disconnected from the cloud. This “store and forward” model ensures sessions start immediately and billing data reconciles seamlessly once the network returns.
