Battery drain with Apple Wallet and Apple Family Card

Update:

The only way to fix it was to close my Apple Family Card account. This ultimately resolved the battery drain, and my watch now is periodically at 50% at the end of the day. The Apple wallet app also no longer consumes much battery, barely a few percent if at all on my iPhone.

Apple, did you let an intern write the code for the Apple Card synchronization? The wallet app is garbage! Wouldn’t surprise me if you will have more problems down the road…not that I care since I no longer have the card ;) I really wonder how this is gonna work out with the digital drivers license?

So yeah, unfortunately switching of "Check for Apply Pay" in Safari doesn't remedy the situation. Frankly, I was a bit skeptical because the issue occurs also on the Apple Watch (remember all my devices are affected: MacBook Pro, Apple Watch and iPhone).

I removed both Apple Card and Apple Cash from my iPhone and Watch. This appeared to fix the situation completely - NO MORE BATTERY DRAIN! Yeah, but sucky because again I can't use the Apple Card.

So, today I figured I'd again add the Apple Card to see if switching off the "Check for Apple Pay" in Safari would work. Within a span of mere 48 minutes my Apple Watch went from 100% to 91%:

So, again, checked the log files, here's one interesting one that indicates again an issue with "passd" (from Apple's PassKit (i.e. Apple Pay and Wallet, i.e. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/passkit):

{"app_name":"passd","share_with_app_devs":0,"app_version":"","incident_id":"14EE4733-9A09-4459-B26A-AE467B5BE157","is_first_party":1,"name":"passd","slice_uuid":"08608ED8-C870-3D90-88E3-03D400A61236","os_version":"Watch OS 8.3 (19S55)","build_version":"","bug_type":"202","timestamp":"2022-01-02 11:10:57.00 -0500"}
Date/Time:        2022-01-02 11:08:49.805 -0500
End time:         2022-01-02 11:10:55.897 -0500
OS Version:       Watch OS 8.3 (Build 19S55)
Architecture:     arm64e
Report Version:   35
Incident Identifier: 14EE4733-9A09-4459-B26A-AE467B5BE157

Data Source:      Microstackshots
Shared Cache:     A8AA42E1-5802-338E-AF9A-D102E75BE73F slid base address 0x1ee64000, slide 0x4e64000

Command:          passd
Path:             /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PassKitCore.framework/passd
Architecture:     arm64_32
Parent:           UNKNOWN [1]
PID:              1591

Event:            cpu usage
Action taken:     none
CPU:              90 seconds cpu time over 126 seconds (71% cpu average), exceeding limit of 50% cpu over 180 seconds
CPU limit:        90s
Limit duration:   180s
CPU used:         90s
CPU duration:     126s
Duration:         126.09s
Duration Sampled: 77.93s
Steps:            52

Hardware model:   Watch4,4
Active cpus:      2
HW page size:     16384
VM page size:     16384

Advisory levels:  Battery -> 2, Combined -> 2, User -> 3, ThermalPressure -> 0
Free disk space:  6443.82 MB/14.72 GB, low space threshold 150 MB

At this point I'm pretty confident that there's nothing I can do on my end, other than removing both my Apple Card and Apple Cash to fix the issue from my devices draining battery.

Please Apple, if you're reading this, do something! The solution is to overhaul the server code that handles the synchronization of transactions. My suspicion is that it isn't working for Apple Card Family members that are sharing the card with both co-owners (usually the spouse) and participants (typically the kids).

iOS 15.1.1 running on iPhone 12 Max Pro and WathOS 8.1 running on Apple Watch Series 4.

That being said, the same error was occurring on:

iPhone 12

Apple Watch Series 5

Again, the glitch appears unrelated to the underlying hardware!

Thanks for your reply. However, I did mention in my post that this occurred across multiple different devices and that it was resolved by removing the Apple Card, which let's face it, is not a real solution.

I tried contacting Apple Support at least a dozen times with no success!

As already disclosed in my original post, I set up a new device using my daughter's iPhone. Again, the problem only occurred when adding the Apple Card to my device that the battery issues started cropping up.

Sorry, not trying to be rude or argumentative. My apologies if it came across that way!

However, please bare the facts in the case in mind:

• multiple devices are affected (my son's iPhone & watch, my daughter's iPhone, my iPhone & Watch), different iCloud accounts are involved (my own and that of my son)
• The battery issue is immediately resolved when removing the Apple Card for both my son and myself
• I already called Apple Support numerously. After factory resetting devices and performing other trouble shooting steps, Apple Support collected all the logs and screenshots. It was escalated to the engineering team, but I have not heard back from them since. This was escalated in October 2021.
• In essence, I'm having the same issues as those described by the posters here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252725827, there was never a resolution found. If you carefully read through the posts, one person in the thread did perform a factory reset on their phone only to find that the problem returned a few days later.
• So, that all being said, let's just for the moment assume that I'm correct and that the root cause is not due to any particular device but rather a result of the software running on the backend servers. The battery drain is merely an unfortunate and aggravating symptom. So, please let us not speculate with hardware resets, I tried all the obvious steps.
• Frankly, unless you owned an Apple Family Card (possibly even only before iOS 14.7 were you added another person as a co-owner and were the accounts were merged following the release of iOS 14.7), and also own an Apple Watch, you might not be able to give me any advice. I am fairly convinced at this point, after months of research, that this problem is entirely a result of the backend synchronization that somehow involves the transactions/charges related to the Apple Card for individual family members and displaying them on the phones of the individual card owners/participants. Now, I'm not sure if the glitch is because of past transactions that occurred before the merging of the Apple Card accounts, or if actually is a result of ongoing transactions.

So again, no offense intended, but I'm pretty well versed as a computer engineer with all the obvious trouble shooting tips. What I need are out of the box solutions, and I'd be so grateful to anyone if they could help me figure out a way to be able to reinstall my Apple Card without it causing a major battery drain on my Apple Watch and iPhone. Thank you so much!

PS:

Also checked several log files on the iPhone, here's another interesting one:

Command:          passd
Path:             /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PassKitCore.framework/passd
Architecture:     arm64e
Parent:           launchd [1]
PID:              2913

Event:            disk writes
Action taken:     none
Writes:           4294.98 MB of file backed memory dirtied over 52131 seconds (82.39 KB per second average), exceeding limit of 49.71 KB per second over 86400 seconds
Writes limit:     4294.97 MB
Limit duration:   86400s
Writes caused:    4294.98 MB
Writes duration:  52131s
Duration:         52130.54s
Duration Sampled: 52119.88s
Steps:            2134 ( (10.49 MB/step))

Hardware model:   iPhone13,4
Active cpus:      6
HW page size:     16384
VM page size:     16384

4294.98 MB for the Wallet app, seriously??? Why???