iPhone NFC frozen

Been using the Libre2 for several months, but a few weeks ago it errored out on a reading claiming it couldn't read the sensor. After checking with technical support at Abbott the recommendation was to remove and replace the half used sensor. (it's only money!). Followed the recommendation only to have that sensor also fail to scan. This second sensor is not enroute back to Abbott for troubleshooting. Tried a third fresh sensor with same result - new sensor fails to scan. It home troubleshooting I also found that ApplePay no longer works. Humpf, both NFC functions failed on my iPhone SE 2022, 18 months old and out of warranty.

Moved over to Apple, Abbott, Google and Reddit for a look for solutions. Of course it could be that the NFC radio or other circuitry failed but seemed somewhat unlikely. Found plenty of similar complaints posted at the various forums and the similarity for a group of the complaints was failure after IOS was upgraded beyond 16.0. Going back to Abbott literature they only assured compatibility between the current 2.7.3 app thru IOS16.0.

Had a long support call with Apple today working up thru three levels of support staff. What they found were several complaints with similar symptoms i.e. both Libre 2 sensor reading and Apple Pay fail together. My phone and the rest in the support forum at Apple indicate that the internal diagnostics indicate that the NFC system is working without errors, even though several customers who actually went to an Apple store for support could physically demonstrate that Apple Pay wasn't working regardless of passing the diagnostic tests.

I'm wondering if the Freestyle Libre2 app doesn't alter some NFC settings, perhaps in the interest of medical privacy and that caused the NFC hang. I live rural with slow internet so i didn't want to go so far as a factory reset on my phone, but did try every reset short of the factory reset (reloading the phone is a miserable undertaking with slow DSL) Apple and other supports forums didn't indicate any particular success with a factory reset either. Apple support indicated that the company had been in contact with Abbott about an app upgrade. The current version 2.7.3 is almost a year and a half old.

I have used a second iPhone SE 2020 to narrow down the possibilities and loaded an independent NFC tag reading/writing app on both phones to try another method to turn on or assess the NFC function. on the second phone apple pay works and the NFC app scans the Libre2 sensor.

Do you think there's any chance that a new Freestyle Libre 2 app upgrade will restore function or have they ruined the NFC system?