Couple of angles that @yozora and @viajantedoceu didn’t really hammer on, which are worth checking before you nuke everything.
1. Focus on the pattern of your errors
You said “errors when adding my debit card and verifying it with my bank.” That sounds like you do reach the bank’s side, which often means:
- Provisioning request is leaving your iPhone fine
- Bank’s “tokenization” or risk engine is blocking it partway through
If the error pops after you pick SMS / call verification, that is almost always a bank rule (risk score, region block, or wallet profile problem), not an Apple bug.
Ask the bank specifically:
- “Is Apple Pay tokenization for this exact card number enabled on your system?”
- “Are there any risk rules or country restrictions on mobile wallets for my profile?”
- “Can you see my failed Apple Pay attempts in your logs with a decline code?”
If support cannot see any attempts, that’s when you look back to Apple / device.
2. Don’t over‑retry on the same day
Here I slightly disagree with the “keep trying different networks” idea. Many issuers silently rate‑limit or tighten fraud rules when you keep attempting to add the same card over and over in a short window. That can lock you into a failure loop.
Try this pattern:
- Delete card from Wallet completely (iPhone and Watch).
- Reboot iPhone only.
- Make a single clean attempt to add the card on iPhone, on a normal home network, no VPN, correct time.
- If it fails, stop. Call the bank with the exact timestamp and local time of that attempt so they can search logs.
More attempts after the first clean one just add noise.
3. Check for “subtle” mismatches that break verification
Even if your card technically supports Apple Pay, a few boring details can kill verification:
- Your legal name changed but the card still has the old one.
- Your bank has an old phone or email on file that their wallet system uses, which does not match what you type.
- Your account is flagged as “non resident” or similar, so their Apple Pay region rules block it even though your iOS region looks fine.
When talking to the bank, ask:
- “Which phone number and address is attached to the wallet / digital payments profile for this card, not just the general account?”
A lot of people discover there is a second, hidden profile with outdated data.
4. Separate iPhone vs Watch troubleshooting
You mentioned both iPhone and Watch. For sanity, isolate them:
- Get the card working on iPhone only first.
- Do not touch the Watch until the card on iPhone shows as activated and usable in stores.
If the card never activates on iPhone, the Watch is irrelevant. If it works on iPhone but fails on Watch, then:
- Check that the Watch is not set to a child / managed account profile (Family Setup type). Those can have Wallet limits.
- Make sure Apple ID on Watch and iPhone is exactly the same, including region for the App Store / Media & Purchases, not just iCloud.
5. Do a controlled Apple side test
Since the others walked you through most device and Apple ID checks, one extra test:
- Create a temporary payment method for your Apple ID:
- Settings > [your name] > Payment & Shipping
- Add a basic credit/debit card just for App Store purchases.
- Make sure there is no “Verify” or error banner there.
- Buy the cheapest app or subscription trial you can find.
If even a 1‑dollar charge fails, that tells you something is off with your Apple ID’s payment trust, which can correlate with Apple Pay issues. In that case, Apple Support is the only real path forward because only they can see account‑level flags.
6. Comparing with the others
- @viajantedoceu covered device toggles and restrictions very thoroughly, which rules out most “simple” settings mistakes.
- @yozora did a good job on bank‑side weirdness like duplicate profiles, which is where many people get stuck.
The missing piece is correlating exact error text + exact time of attempt with the bank’s internal logs. That is how you move the conversation from “try again later” to “your wallet profile is in state X with code Y.”
If you can post:
- Exact wording of the iPhone error
- Whether any card has ever worked with Apple Pay on this Apple ID
- Whether your card works on someone else’s iPhone with Apple Pay already running
you can usually narrow it to:
- Bank / card configuration, or
- Apple ID / account restriction, not just a random iOS setting.
That targeted info will get you further than just repeating the add‑card flow on different networks.