Can't add any card to Apple Pay on Apple Watch

This suggestion helped me with this same problem today. I turned off “Simple passcode” on the Apple watch. Entered a longer passcode. Then added the credit card again, but this time I entered all credit card details manually, as if it were a different card. Success!

Hi

It may help to follow these steps:

With your Apple Watch connected to your iPhone via Bluetooth and your iPhone connected to Wi-Fi, unpair your Apple Watch via the Watch app:

• Unpair your Apple Watch and iPhone - Apple Support

On your iPhone:

• Close the Watch app:
  • Double-click the Home button and swipe up on the Watch app preview to close it.
• Go to: Settings > iCloud - at the bottom of the screen, Sign out.
• Go to: Settings > Touch ID & Passcode - Turn Passcode off.
• Restart your iPhone and Apple Watch (normally):
  • Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
  • Restart your Apple Watch - Apple Support
• On your iPhone: sign back in to iCloud and turn Passcode back on.
• Add your card(s) back to Apple Pay on your iPhone.

Re-pair your Apple Watch, either restoring it from backup or setting it up as a new watch:

• Set up your Apple Watch - Apple Support

Try again to add your card(s) to Apple Pay on your Apple Watch, following the steps here:

• Set up Apple Pay on your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac - Apple Support

I read through all the replies and ultimately discovered the best advice came from John Kinard above. The KEY piece was the second half of his recommendation : to MANUALLY ADD THE CARD through the watch app and not rely on the card already stored on my iPhone. My card synced immediately after manually entering all the required data.

Given the steps that you have tried, I suggest that you contact Apple Support for assistance:

• Contact - Official Apple Support
• https://twitter.com/applesupport

Not sure if you ever got this resolved, but I encountered the same and resolved it. The issue was due to a policy set on my BYOD device (iPhone 6S). The policy required a non-simple passcode and both the phone and the watch; My phone had a non-simple numeric passcode requirement for minimum 7 digits...the watch was set to simple with 4 digits. I changed the watch passcode to non-simple and changed the watch passcode to a 7-digit code. After doing this I was able to add my cards from Apple Pay on the phone to the watch.

So, check this and variations on the theme. IE, make sure that whatever password strength and/or other policy requirements enforced on your iphone, or specific to your watch, match up as it seems the error handling isn't there to trap this issue when it comes up, and the result is a generic "cannot connect" message.

Good luck, hope this helps.

Was having the same problem after the Watch OS4 update. Had to re-add all my cards to my watch. All worked fine except one which kept giving me an Invalid Card error (even though it was already on my iPhone). John's suggestion (above) to enter the card details manually did the trick. Thanks for the tip!

I tried ALL the above BS and none of it worked. The card is on my phone. When I use the watch app to try and add the card to my watch it just says "could not connect to Apple Pay. Make sure you are connected to the internet." Well, I'm certainly connected to the internet, and no one should have to jump through this many hoops to get something simple to work on a device with the little jingle "It just works". 'cause it just ain't workin'!

Crazy thing is, the card even shows up in the app. but if you try to add it you get the above error.

I'm still open to suggestions if anyone has figured this out. There's a bajillion people with this issue.

Thank you! I spent two hours on this, on and off, today, and your suggestion fixed it in one go.

I had trouble adding cards using the scan feature. Adding "manually" worked just fine.