Apple Pay doesn't work at a car wash but using the card's own NFC does.

[zorinlynx]

We have a local car wash that has the Apple Pay logo on the terminal, but for some reason the transaction always gets declined. It actually appears on my phone as "DECLINED". I've tried numerous times hoping it would be fixed, but it never has been.

Recently they sent me a replacement credit card because my old one had expired, and it had the NFC logo on it! I figured, why not try it when I went to the car wash. I held the card near the reader, and BEEP! it worked perfectly.

Does anyone know why a physical NFC credit card would work, but not Apple Pay? Don't they use the same protocol? The car wash employees have no idea and even eventually covered the Apple Pay logo with tape because they were tired of people trying to use it.

 

[ecschwarz]

What card were you trying to use? This happened a bit more earlier with some cards because Apple Pay is often set up to do EMV contactless and magstripe contactless (up until recently, most Amex cards were magstripe contactless only on Apple Pay). I suspect the car wash was only expecting one method.

 

[zorinlynx]

What card were you trying to use? This happened a bit more earlier with some cards because Apple Pay is often set up to do EMV contactless and magstripe contactless (up until recently, most Amex cards were magstripe contactless only on Apple Pay). I suspect the car wash was only expecting one method.

It was a Chase Freedom Unlimited Visa card. Same card both times, NFC with the physical card works, NFC with Apple Pay using that card fails.

 

[lartola]

We have a local car wash that has the Apple Pay logo on the terminal, but for some reason the transaction always gets declined. It actually appears on my phone as "DECLINED". I've tried numerous times hoping it would be fixed, but it never has been.

Recently they sent me a replacement credit card because my old one had expired, and it had the NFC logo on it! I figured, why not try it when I went to the car wash. I held the card near the reader, and BEEP! it worked perfectly.

Does anyone know why a physical NFC credit card would work, but not Apple Pay? Don't they use the same protocol? The car wash employees have no idea and even eventually covered the Apple Pay logo with tape because they were tired of people trying to use it.

Maybe that system is so old that it doesn’t recognize the apple pay token (the “card” number assigned to your iphone and the dynamic security code associated with it and transmitted to authorize the payment in place of a regular card’s 3 digit security code).

 

[tmiw]

What card were you trying to use? This happened a bit more earlier with some cards because Apple Pay is often set up to do EMV contactless and magstripe contactless (up until recently, most Amex cards were magstripe contactless only on Apple Pay). I suspect the car wash was only expecting one method.

I would have expected Apple Pay to work but not the physical card; the most common issue is EMV contactless not being supported by the merchant and the physical card not being capable of MSD (the Citi Costco card is notorious for this). From what I can tell, both physical Chase cards and their Apple Pay equivalents support both.

OP, maybe try re-adding the card if you haven't done so already? It could be some weird provisioning issue that's causing the problem.