Google Pay

Jamie BG

in uk google pay is available and installed on watch and works very well. Hopefully google get their finger out and get this issue resolved for you as as possible. Seems very weird that it isn’t available considering for how many years it has been out.

Bulkan

It depends of the country and bank.

@Bulkan said in Google Pay:

It depends of the country and bank.

not really, a lot more countries are supported on the phones which are not supported on the watches

Jamie BG

@Metalmi - I don’t understand that. What do you mean - do you mean other services like Garmin etc?

Basically need 3 things for it to work:

Bank/Card provider supports it.
Service provider provides it i.e. Google Pay / Garmin Pay/ Apple Pay/ Visa/ Mastercard etc
Store/Purchase point has signed up/agreed to these services as they pay for it (and probably pass it on in their prices).

If you phone works in a store/purchase point with that service/card combination (Google Pay/Garmin etc) then your watch with the same service/card combination will work.

In the UK Google Pay/Apple/Master/Visa etc are very well supported and virtually work everywhere; however services like Garmin Pay are virtually useless as very few banks are signed up to (3) and generally doesn’t work on the service points in the stores/purchase points.

@Jamie-BG said in Google Pay:

@Metalmi - I don’t understand that. What do you mean - do you mean other services like Garmin etc?

Basically need 3 things for it to work:

Bank/Card provider supports it.

Service provider provides it i.e. Google Pay / Garmin Pay/ Apple Pay/ Visa/ Mastercard etc

Store/Purchase point has signed up/agreed to these services as they pay for it (and probably pass it on in their prices).

If you phone works in a store/purchase point with that service/card combination (Google Pay/Garmin etc) then your watch with the same service/card combination will work.

In the UK Google Pay/Apple/Master/Visa etc are very well supported and virtually work everywhere; however services like Garmin Pay are virtually useless as very few banks are signed up to (3) and generally doesn’t work on the service points in the stores/purchase points.

I mean this:

“you can use this Google Pay feature in Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, Uruguay, and Vietnam.”

"To use Google Pay on your watch, you need to:

Be in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, UK, or US.
…"

You also need to be lucky to be able to use Google Pay on your watch.

Jamie BG

@Metalmi Can’t see why it can’t if the phone is accepted as the watch is using the samesame card, and same NFC communication.

I think the issue here is 1)Bank/Card provider is not enabling this function.
When you set up NFC payment effectively your phone uses a different number to your card number (its linked on the bank side)
When I set up my watch, it used the phone to pull the card details and set it up on the watch and sent a message to my bank requesting approval to set up, which it accepted - so i suspect that it gives the watch a different user number from the phone, and this is probably the sticking point.

Not sure why your bank will not allow it, as technically from our side of the fence there isn’t anything stopping it, but might be from the bank side in terms of software etc. Would suggest sending them a query (when my bank didn’t have google pay a couple of years ago, as an option I queried and was advised that on the basis of all the queries they were receiving the were going to institue it in a month - and they did)

@Jamie-BG said in Google Pay:

@Metalmi Can’t see why it can’t if the phone is accepted as the watch is using the samesame card, and same NFC communication.

I think the issue here is 1)Bank/Card provider is not enabling this function.
When you set up NFC payment effectively your phone uses a different number to your card number (its linked on the bank side)
When I set up my watch, it used the phone to pull the card details and set it up on the watch and sent a message to my bank requesting approval to set up, which it accepted - so i suspect that it gives the watch a different user number from the phone, and this is probably the sticking point.

Not sure why your bank will not allow it, as technically from our side of the fence there isn’t anything stopping it, but might be from the bank side in terms of software etc. Would suggest sending them a query (when my bank didn’t have google pay a couple of years ago, as an option I queried and was advised that on the basis of all the queries they were receiving the were going to institue it in a month - and they did)

Issue is that Google is disallowing Google Pay on the watch outside those countries. You don’t see Google Pay app on watch. And even if you enable it, you can’t use it.

Only way to be able to use it is to use VPN. And in that case you must have a card from available banks from that country.

aeroild

@Metalmi Yes, this is true. The Google Pay app on the Wear OS watch is not enabled on the watch in the Google Pay for Wear OS unsupported countries. If I reset my watch I can open Google Pay, add a card and the Google Pay app seems to work fine untill the watch/app detects that I am not in a supported country. When the watch/app detects this, the Google Pay app deactivates.

I haven’t tried the VPN workaround to enable the app, but as far as I know it will work also using a card from an unsupported country (as long as Google Pay for Android is supported by the card issuer).

@aeroild said in Google Pay:

@Metalmi Yes, this is true. The Google Pay app on the Wear OS watch is not enabled on the watch in the Google Pay for Wear OS unsupported countries. If I reset my watch I can open Google Pay, add a card and the Google Pay app seems to work fine untill the watch/app detects that I am not in a supported country. When the watch/app detects this, the Google Pay app deactivates.

I haven’t tried the VPN workaround to enable the app, but as far as I know it will work also using a card from an unsupported country (as long as Google Pay for Android is supported by the card issuer).

I know @Jamie-BG is not a believer, haha

In my case (I tried it) VPN worked only with a card from supported countries.

Jamie BG

@Metalmi, Oh I believe that it isn’t being allowed, but as I said and you have proved it isn’t because it doesn’t work, someone down the provision chain isn’t allowing it whether its google or banks.

aeroild

@Metalmi I just had to try the VPN workaround on my Suunto 7. So I installed Tunnelbear VPN on my phone and chose to connect to the Switzerland server. Turned off WiFi on watch and restarted it. Activated the Google Pay app on my watch, went through the required steps in Google Pay on my phone, which included confirming my Visa-card issued by a bank in Norway, where Google Pay for Android has launched but not for Wear OS. I went to the store and no problem paying with my Suunto 7 in a country where Google Pay for Wear OS has not launched!

@aeroild said in Google Pay:

@Metalmi I just had to try the VPN workaround on my Suunto 7. So I installed Tunnelbear VPN on my phone and chose to connect to the Switzerland server. Turned off WiFi on watch and restarted it. Activated the Google Pay app on my watch, went through the required steps in Google Pay on my phone, which included confirming my Visa-card issued by a bank in Norway, where Google Pay for Android has launched but not for Wear OS. I went to the store and no problem paying with my Suunto 7 in a country where Google Pay for Wear OS has not launched!

Thanks for info! This is interesting, I will definitely have to try it again then.