i have the google pay app and have added all my cards.
i currently want to use it with amex and have set that up as the main card.
however every time i try to use it in a shop i get a transaction error and it doesn’t work. this is in shops that accept amex as well as mastercard and visa.
what’s weird is it’s definitely set up correctly as when i use my amex card normally i get an instant google pay notification on my phone (not sure how google pay gets this information but still).
how on earth do you actually use google pay on android? all the instructions i’ve read say just open the app on your phone, turn on nfc and then touch the reader like a normal contactless payment. why doesn’t it work?
You don’t need to open the app to make a payment. That should help simplify things.
If it’s less than £30 you can tap without unlocking your phone, above £30, you need to unlock your phone for it to work. Limits and acceptance vary from each merchant.
that says you can pay at mcd’s with amex through google pay and it’s failed multiple times for me so it definitely seems it’s a google pay issue not amex. so we’re back to square one and the reason i opened this thread…
that wasn’t what it seemed like from the comments above. are you saying that actually just accepting amex and contactless is enough for amex through google pay?
either way, that’s all irrelevant now because the thread is about why my google pay doesn’t work and how to fix it.
This is what I would recommend trying. Change your default card and then try and see what happens. Then you can locate whether it’s AMEX or GooglePay that is the problem.
You may have set it up correctly, but there’s a problem somewhere.
I don’t have an Android so I don’t know how it is activated but from the comments here, you just hold it near the terminal? There’s no ‘activating’ it? On an iPhone/Watch, you need to double tap and then the card will show on screen.
It’ll take a bit of trial-and-error to narrow it down.
We know your Amex is in Google Pay, and we assume it has been entered correctly. There a quite a few variables involved here and none of us (or yourself) can eliminate them without a trial or two.
So if paying for something at a terminal with Amex via GPay (contactless) within any set limits doesn’t work, the next logical step is to try and pay for something with GPay (contactless) but with a different card.
As others have suggested, I would try a different card, purely to confirm whether it is Google Pay or Amex issue.
Did you use the four-digit-number on the front of the Amex card to set it up and not the three-digit-number on the back? I think you must have otherwise it would have been rejected by GooglePay, I think, but just checking.
I use my Amex through GooglePay regularly and have not experienced the issue you appear to have, to be able to assist further.
