Three weekends ago, my phone did something weird when I tried using it to pay for a few farmers-market purchases: nothing. The Google Wallet app functioned like usual when I opened it and picked the credit card I use for everyday spending, but then tapping the phone to the NFC reader on a merchant’s credit-card terminal yielded no response.

Since all my cards have NFC built-in and since I had my wallet on me, I didn’t waste time trying to debug the problem and just fished out the physical card to complete the purchase. And then I spent a couple of weeks ignoring the problem while it failed to go away on its own.

Venting about this issue on a chat thread with other tech journalists surfaced a troubleshooting suggestion I should have thought to test on my own: see if other apps using the phone’s NFC radio work. I first remembered that I have one weird transit app that solely exists to top up Dublin’s stored-value Leap card, then was relieved to see the app detect the card I’d collected two summers ago when I tapped it to the back of the phone.

Likewise, Metro’s SmarTrip app responded to a tap of my own card. And then on Friday, the Epic Pass app on my phone (yes, I finally got that activated) functioned properly as a wireless, inside-a-ski-jacket lift ticket. So the NFC radio on this phone was clearly fine.

What else could it be? Google’s r/GooglePixel forum surfaced posts reporting similar problems, and one not only reassured me that I wasn’t uniquely snakebit but pointed to a specific remedy that I’ve since seen suggested elsewhere: deleting the cache of the system-level NFC Service app.

Following that required a deeper dive than usual into Android’s Settings app: Tap Apps, tap the “See all” link below the list of recently-opened apps, tap the vertical-ellipsis button at the top right and select “Show system,” then scroll down to select “Nfc Service” (yes, that abbreviation for “Near Field Communication” should be capitalized), then tap “Storage & cache,” then tap “Clear cache.”

“Trash cache” is an old tech-support trick that seems like it shouldn’t work anymore–shouldn’t apps be sufficiently self-aware to know when they’re ingesting corrupted temporary data?–and yet it seems to have worked in this case. Will the fix stick? I sure hope so, at least until the next time Google indulges in yet another mobile-payment-apps reorg.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/02/23/this-months-smartphone-snafu-wayward-google-wallet-behavior/

#EpicPass #GooglePay #GoogleWallet #GPay #LeapTopUp #mobilePayments #NFC #Reddit #SmarTrip #tapToPay