Setting up Garmin Pay with any UK bank or credit card

UPDATE Monzo is now supported by Garmin Pay.

UPDATE Don’t use Curve.

Garmin Pay, unlike Apple Pay, is not widely supported in the UK. Apple Pay in the UK is supported by over 150 financial institutions. Garmin Pay is supported by 12. Apple Pay is one of my favourite features on Apple Watch.

I wanted to make the switch to my new Garmin Epix Gen2 Pro as smooth as possible and I was worried that I was going to miss out on the ability to pay for goods with my watch.

There’s a way around Garmin Pay’s poor support. Curve. Curve is a service that acts as a proxy for your various credit and debit cards. You add your cards to Curve. Add Curve to your Garmin watch. Then pay for goods with your Garmin Watch. Curve then works out which card to use.

Setting up Curve was simple with their iOS app. You have an account set up in about 5mins and then all that’s left to do is to add Curve to Garmin Pay.

Paying with an Apple Watch is a case of double-clicking the side button. It’s a shame that Garmin’s default isn’t as slick. You have to hold the light button, enter the controls menu, and press up/down multiple times to find the wallet icon. Garmin lists 7 separate steps in the Epix manual. There is an easier way. I configured a Hot Key so that a long press on START opens Garmin Pay. That’s one step instead of 7.

Curve has a couple of interesting features that I want to explore further. The first one is Smart Rules. You can configure one or two rules (you have to pay for more) to determine which cards will be used for payment. The second is Anti-Embarrassment Mode, where you can use a backup card if your Monzo account is empty.

Over the past week I’ve been using Garmin Pay with the Garmin Epix and the experience has been on a par with Apple Pay, which is all I would have wanted.