Which phones are affected

Not only Vivo X200 Ultra users are affected by this new Google Pay problem. Currently affected models also include Chinese versions of the Vivo X300 Pro, Vivo X300 Ultra, Vivo X100 Ultra, Vivo X Fold5, Vivo X Fold3 Pro, Vivo X200 Pro (mini), Oppo Find N3, Oppo Find X9 Pro, Xiaomi 17 Ultra, Xiaomi 13 Pro, Onplus Ace6, Oneplus 15T. Many more will probably be reported soon. The problem does not appear to be limited to any specific region; reports of the issue have come in from both Europe and Brazil for example.

Possible workarounds

At the moment, there appear to be two primary workarounds for the issue. The first one is to roll back to earlier versions of Google Play Services, which only works via ADB and completely resets Google Wallet. You’ll then have to re-add and set up all your cards. However, this is only a temporary fix, as it’s nearly impossible to prevent another update from occurring at a later date.

Marvin explains the specific steps to follow in his XDA post. The other solution, suggested on Reddit, is to set other wallets as a default payment option, for example Curve Pay. That way you can bypass Google Wallet entirely. Curve does have it’s own share of problems unfortunately, for example, when it detects yet another supposedly unauthorized payment and then remains disabled for weeks because Curve support is slow or unavailable.

No official fix in sight

A permanent fix is currently not in sight. Many users of Chinese smartphones are still on the old 26.26 version of Play Services and probably haven’t even realized that they, too, may be affected by this issue in the near future. There’s currently a heated debate on Reddit over the reasons for this sudden block of China-ROM phones from using Google Wallet. This is likely to also affect Chinese citizens who are vacationing or working abroad and want to use Google Wallet. At this point, it cannot be ruled out that this is a bug, but unfortunately, it currently looks more like a deliberate ban. Google has not yet commented on the issue; we will try to reach someone at Google and keep you updated.