Passport ID not adding to Apple Watch Wallet

My situation was different. After 7 or 8 attempts I got it on the phone but not the watch. On the attempt that worked I just wore my glasses because I can't see without them and it worked. Went into the Watch app to add it and it failed a couple of dozen times. Called Apple. The first rep did the standard trouble shooting which I did on my own. He conferred with others and told me one of them said to remove it from the phone and re-add it. I told my rep that guy is a fool. That's not the problem and if I remove it I doubt will get it back. After an hour and a half they said that was the last option. Did it and surprise, surprise I can't add the passport on the phone now like I told them. Transferred me to someone on the Wallet team. She told me she had some else with the same problem. I sent some screenshots that she can send to the engineers and they will get back to me. Said that other people are having the same problem. They will call back Thursday add collect logs. I figure for me I've been timed out for trying to many times. I think the general problem is either the package that Apple collects and retransmits has problems or the US verification system has a problem (thanks AI and shut down). Either way I'll try tomorrow with better lighting and if it doesn't work wait.

I had exactly the same issue. Finally succeeded today. Was getting these errors repeatedly, as well as "Verification in progress" followed 10 mins later by "Verification required." :sigh:

What may've helped:

• Restart the phone and immediately try it.
• Keep the phone screen awake and unlocked.
• Perform the Live Photo Verification just as you look on your passport photo, i.e. with or without glasses.
• I was asked to unlock my Watch when I clicked the "Verification complete" notification. Odd, because teh Watch was already unlocked.

Good luck. Just keep trying. I strongly suspect Apple is still working out problems on the server side of things.

For Apple personnel: I have a separate thread with screenshots showing that I had to go through Verification multiple times within an hour without success.

Yeah…add me to those with this problem. The first day passports were able to be added I went ahead and added it to my iPhone 17pro max. During setup I got a popup that asked if I wanted to install to phone and watch or just phone. I answered “phone and watch”. Went through all the steps and at the end and after waiting a few minutes to verify, my passport was successfully added to both my iPhone 17pro max and my Apple Watch Series 7.

The problem started when I got a new watch series 11. I setup my new watch using the backup that was created automatically when I unpaired and reset my old watch for return to Apple. When everything was setup and configured correctly, I attempted to add my passport to my new watch. The attempt failed at the verification step. It would either simply state that my passport could not be added or else just loop back to the verification screen.

Since then I’ve opened a support ticket with the Wallet and ApplePay team at Apple. We tried pretty much everything to get the watch to add my passport. No luck. I tried numerous things including factory reset the the phone and the watch “. They’ve taken logs and passed them on to the engineers.So far no response from Apple support. It’s been three days now, so I’ll check in with them after the Thanksgiving holiday.

it looks as though though this issue is related to some sort of bug on Apple’s end. Hopefully will hear back from them soon. My tech woman was very nice and very thorough. Hopefully they’ll figure it out but this is still very new tech and bugs are to be expected. I’ll be looking to see if we get a firmware update or some further contact from support after the holiday.

Spent too many hours today trying to get this to work. So many different configurations (different shirts, different lighting,different photo background, on WiFi, on cellular, with watch, without watch but, without watch but off). SO many times that I twice got a message that the phone was too hot to read the RFID chip, one wallet crash out, two motion verification with disappearing buttons and one full out phone crash.) I'm pretty sure I've been blocked from the system so going to give it a few days for the system to release me. Send an email to the advisor from yesterday telling what I had done. Supper nice lady. I'd give her a shout out be don't know if that's OK. Anyway she replied back and said they need to collect logs. Told her I can do it today and we set it up. They had me screen record trying to add the passport (it failed) and then collected the logs. Now I wait.

The Apple Advisor call this morning after the engineers looked at the logs. They know there are issues, have no idea what the problems are, and she said just keep checking for updates. A most unsatisfactory outcome. Apple is just using customers as both beta testers and quality and assurance testers. Still not working for me.

Still no luck. Restarted phone, tried to add passport to watch...after it takes the photo and captures movement I get the "verification in progress" message and then it just loops back to repeat the verification process endlessly. Going to try to contact Apple support tomorrow to follow up on my open case and see if there's anything new to report.

Well, after another round with Apple Support I’m worse off than I was before. The tech had me remove the passport from the phone and try to reinstall it to phone and watch. Failed. Now I don’t have the passport on either device and cannot get it installed on either device. More screen recordings and logs taken for submission to engineering. So I’m back to the waiting game. Apple needs to get this fixed before they keep touting this “great new feature”.

Same thing happened to me. I got it on the phone during the roll out weekend. The Level One tech said to remove and re-add. I even told him I don't think I will be able to add it to either if I did that and he said that's all the advise he could offer. Of course it didn't work in the 300+ times I've tried since. Those Level One love to use a hammer to problems like remove thing or sign out of iCloud. The Level 2 has ghosted me. Just another half baked Apple rollout.

I’m in the same situation. I’ve tried to finish Verification on my Apple Watch Ultra 3 many times with no luck.

watchOS 26.1 or greater is required.