It is a bank problem for sure and a frustrating one. Hopefully you guys have had better luck than me calling First Tennessee at their call center for support on this. What is interesting about mine is that apple pay WAS working on my iphone 6. When I got my apple watch, I attempted to add it but got the invalid card message. Then I realized that the card I had added to my apple pay account had a different expiration date (that card had got damaged to I requested the bank send me a new card) but the 16 digit number remained the same. The only change was the expiration date and security code. Since the expiration date had not expired on the original card I had registered with apple pay, I would use apple pay all day long on my iPhone. My first thought was ok it must be something buggy with the watch and First Tennessee. So I waited a few days and tried again. Still no luck. I then tried to enter the card on my iPad Air 2 and then got the same result with the message of , "Invalid Card". I then removed the card from my phone and attempted to re-add the card (using the current debit card I use daily) and still got the error message on my phone. So now I have no card added to my apple pay. I guarantee if I had the old expiration date and security code off the old card, I could have added it that way no problem.
So with that being said, I called the wonderful customer service at FTB. I gave the lady all my account information and then she says, "I need to ask you some background questions in addition to these to verify the account and do you have time for this today". My first thought was ok lady, if I didn't have time, why am I calling you. But I am polite so I just said yes. The problem is none of the crazy verification questions had anything to do with me. She asked me things like have you ever owned any of these cars (which I had never owned any). Then she asked me how old one of my cousins was (which honestly I had no clue his exact age, just his approximate age). She then began to ask me questions about people that I did NOT know. I asked her where they got these verification questions from. Her response was a 3rd party. When I asked which 3rd party, she said she had no idea and I had to go to the bank in person. I can't say how frustrated I am with this. It should be as easy as typing in the card information and being done. They should NOT have to verify anything on their end.....none of the other card issuers I have had to do this.In fact, taking a photo of their card doesn't even work. When I activated my initial card with FTB and Apple Pay I just called and they activated it within minutes. That is great but that is really an unneeded extra step and for whatever reason that person didn't ask me all the irrelevant background questions.
If anyone has been able to get their card verified recently for apple pay, please let me know how you did it/who you contacted. I am going to call my local branch manager and see if she can help me. However I am not very hopeful.