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Apple Pay not working after updating it to Watch OS 8

Hi All,


I’m facing an issue in that none of my cards loaded into my wallet on my watch now no longer work after updating to Watch OS 8. Previously I used to get a message on the watch when paying which said “hold near card reader” or similar. This no longer appears on the watch and no payment is taken. The same cards are all loaded on my phone and all work fine. Tried multiple retailers and multiple cards, tried removing the cards and re adding, turning the watch of and restarting, but none of these things fix the issue. I’m completely stuck and can’t think what to try next?


thanks

Ian

Apple Watch

Posted on Sep 26, 2021 12:33 PM

Reply
4 replies

Sep 27, 2021 4:57 PM in response to Symthes121

I have the same problem. And the response above doesn’t really help. I’m wondering if we’re missing some new step to activate the card. It used to be that your scroll to the payment method - wait a second or two - and then see the “Hold Near Reader” message. Now we don’t see that - and like Ian, it appears they’ve all stopped working.


Does anyone have advice better than “ask Apple Support?”

Oct 5, 2021 3:33 PM in response to Symthes121

I did contact Apple Support. At the end of the day, I was able to solve it by effectively rebuilding the Watch. I unpaired it and then paired it back. Once that happened, the Apple Pay behaviors started working.


Having discussions with the Apple Support folks lead me to the following hypothesis which was my experience. Don't know if this was yours. I had stumbled upon the "AssistiveTouch" new functionality and I tried it out. However, I couldn't really get the hang of it - and more importantly, I couldn't figure out how to get the watch to activate Apple Pay when it was on. So I turned the whole thing off. But as soon as I did that, the watch would NEVER activate the credit cards. I believe that there is a defect in the OS that if you turn this AssistiveTouch thing on, and then turn it off, the OS will not let you use Apple Pay on your credit cards in the watch.


I've submitted this feedback to Apple. Like I said, hard to know if this is something you tried as well or not - but for sure, the act of unpairing and then repairing the watch to the phone worked and I have Apple Pay functionality back on my watch.

Apple Pay not working after updating it to Watch OS 8

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