My Pixel 11 Pro XL has been having issue with Tap to pay, and I thought I was alone. Turns out I am not. Many Pixel users are also complaining that they can't pay with their phones, leaving them frustrated and with no other solution if they don't have a backup payment option.
I've been running into the same issue on my phone over the last couple of weeks, and it's infuriating because it took me a long time to start trusting Google Wallet with my paymentsinstead of getting out my physical card at every register and checkout terminal.
Now, I'm back to square zero. I need to make sure I have my cards each time I get out of the house, or else I might be standing in queue trying and trying to get the payment to go through, to no avail.
How and why Pixel's Tap to pay is failing
The problem is unpredictable
The issue started a couple of weeks ago for me. I remember I was in Bordeaux at the tram station trying to buy a couple of day tickets. The ticket machine had a small notice saying it wasn't taking physical cards, but I'd just seen someone use tap-to-pay to purchase their tickets.
So I decided to try paying with my Pixel 11 Pro XL; it failed. I'm almost used to the dance of NFC now, so I moved my phone away, brought it closer, and nothing happened again. Weird, I thought. No vibration, not even the small error message that tells me I need to verify my identity (which happens when my phone wasn't unlocked with biometrics).
I had just added my card to my Pixel Watch 5, so I thought I'd try the watch first before taking off my backpack and unearthing my wallet for the physical card. Lo-and-behold, the watch vibrated and the payment directly went through without a hiccup.
I was surprised it did, but didn't think much of it then. I had my tram tickets in hand, I was in a rush, and I chalked it off to whatever issue the ticket machine was having and that was causing it to refuse some physical cards.
However, the issue returned again and again. Throughout my weekend in Bordeaux, and over the two weeks since, I estimate that it's happened around one time out of five — 20% of the time. I get to pay, and my Pixel has no idea it's near a payment terminal.
It literally just happened this morning at the bakery. I got my croissant, put my Pixel up to the terminal with the Wallet app open and... nothing. No vibration, no error. There was no queue waiting behind me, so I apologized to the baker and asked her if I could try a couple of fixes.
Force-closing the Wallet app and reopening it didn't solve it. Locking and unlocking my phone didn't either. It's as if the NFC antenna didn't even know it was near an NFC terminal. Some users say they're able to get over it by cleaning the Wallet app's cache, but I haven't tried that yet
I can't keep trying to pay and failing
I've resorted to other payment methods
This recurrent issue over the last couple of weeks has soured my love for Google Wallet. It took me several years to start trusting NFC payments with my phone and feeling they're reliable enough to justify me pulling up my phone instead of my card at any payment terminal or register.
It was only once all my cards and banks added support for Wallet, and once I had tried it enough times to realize it worked well enough that I made the switch and started trusting it even in busy stores with long queues. But now, I'm back to mistrusting it and wondering if I should bother with it or just go straight to my physical card.
I don't want to be the one holding back a dozen Parisians in a rush because my payment doesn't work. I certainly don't care for the sighs of exasperation or my own panic trying to pay repeatedly and seeing my Pixel 11 Pro XL pretend it's not near a payment terminal.
Right now, I'm basically judging what I use on a case-by-case basis. If I'm in a crowded spot, I'll use my Pixel Watch 5 or pull up the physical card. If I'm somewhere with fewer people and with potentially more room for failure and error, I try to pay with my Pixel 11 Pro XL.
Until this issue is clearly resolved, I can't trust it more than this.
This is the price for frequent updates
Look, as much as I love how frequently Google updates its apps and systems and how often it changes features and moves things around for no reason, I can't help but notice the huge number of bugs that arise from these updates. And who knows how many of these get squashed and how many carry over, because no one made enough noise to get them fixed!
But being stuck at checkout in a store because your phone's NFC chip is refusing to turn on and you can't pay, while holding back a line of annoyed customers, is not a nice experience. Trying to take public transit and realizing your phone won't scan the transit card properly is not fun either.
This stuff should work. Bugs like these should be rare and should be immediately fixed as a priority. Keep the AI and all the other superfluous stuff, I don't care for those. I first need my Pixel phone to do the basics right, and those include a functional Wallet app that saves me when I leave my physical wallet behind.