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I have to carry two phones - one Samsung Galaxy 6 and one iPhone 6. Unfortunately, something in the Galaxy sets off the Apple Pay on the iPhone when they're in the same pocket, and it constantly shows the credit card. Normally I wouldn't care, but this accelerates battery drain as the screen is on far more often.

Is there some software way to address this in either device?

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  • I don't have a Samsung Galaxy 6 to experiment, but I did finally have a look at the specs and see it also has NFC communications for a payment system. If you are not using the payment feature on that device you might be able to solve this by turning that feature off on the galaxy 6.
    – Tyson
    Jul 15, 2015 at 3:32

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Apple Pay works with NFC "Near Field Communication" band at 13.56 Mhz (but in low energy) means it has to be very close to the source to work).

You iPhone gets a interference signal (not intended) from Samsung and it thinks it is near a payment machine and it activates.

Since it is a interference, there is no software that can fix that, it is a hardware issue (shielding). (BT and WiFi) or keep them apart.

So your choices are, turn off the Apple Pay, turn off the Samsung payment feature, or keep them apart.

Edit: upon closer exam of the "Samsung Galaxy s6" model it shows to have the NFC capability, that would also explain the interference. (and you may be able to solve the problem by turning the Samsung's payment feature off.)

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  • Rats. I was hoping there was some software way to tell the iPhone to recognize the Samsung fingerprint and ignore it.
    – aronchick
    Jul 14, 2015 at 17:19
  • Actually Apple pay works on NFC at 13.56 MHz, not as part of bluetooth or wifi at 2.4Ghz.
    – Tyson
    Jul 14, 2015 at 17:46
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It's fairly easy to turn off the NFC capabilities on your Android (simply go to your pull down menu or settings and click the icon to turn it off. Here is a link to a video example). This should stop it from communicating with your iPhone and not cause any troubles with your Apple Pay.

In terms of software for this, there are some 'If This, Then That' types of applications on the market. I do not have any experience with any in particular, but you could possibly set it up (on either phone) to recognize one phone's NFC and then force it not to communicate to the other or to turn off the NFC on one phone during certain hours, etc.

Hope this helps! If all else fails, just try keeping the phones in separate pockets seeing as the NFC requires the phones to be in very close proximity of one another.

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