Pixel owners have been reporting problems with Google Wallet's tap-to-pay feature since the middle of last month, according to complaints on Reddit and other support forums. Some users say the feature fails intermittently, while others report it does not work at all. Because the failure only becomes apparent at the moment of a transaction, users often discover the problem when they are already at a payment terminal.
The apparent cause is that some Pixel phones do not recognize that an NFC terminal is nearby when Google Wallet is open, so the device never sends the information needed to complete a purchase. The bug is affecting a broad set of devices, including nearly every phone from the Pixel 9 series onward. The Pixel 11 moved its NFC antenna to the top of the phone rather than the middle, as in prior generations, but the problem is not limited to that model. The issue has been observed on a Pixel 10 Pro.
Google Wallet has expanded well beyond payment cards in recent years. It now stores items including driver's licenses, transit passes and insurance cards. That convenience means an outage can disrupt a user's day when they depend on the app for identification, travel or payment.
Google has not acknowledged the bug, and no official fix has been released. The company has been contacted about the reports. In the absence of a fix from Google, users have posted several workarounds based on their own experiences that may restore tap-to-pay functionality.
The reports come as tap-to-pay has become a routine part of everyday commerce in the United States, where consumers increasingly rely on phones rather than physical cards at checkout. For Pixel owners, the intermittent nature of the failure makes it difficult to know before reaching the register whether a payment will go through. Until Google responds, users are left with community-reported fixes rather than an official solution.
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