iphone wallet not syncing with apple watch and error message "verification failed, unknown error occurred"

I have apple wallet on my phone (iphone XR) and my bank cards were previously synced with my apple watch SE. My bank cards have now disappeared from my apple watch wallet. I have tried everything - removing the watch from my account and restarting it, restarting the phone, signing out of apple id, changing apple id password. When I try to add my card to my apple watch wallet I am getting the error message "Verification failed, unknown error occurred". I have also checked the Apple status and it was green. Help please?