Turning Off Apple Pay on Your Lost Apple Watch

OK, so you lost your Apple Watch or had it stolen. That’s bad enough, but what do you do if you’ve added a bunch of cards to Apple Pay on the device? Since the Watch requires a passcode if you’ve got Apple Pay on, you’re in the clear, right? Well, maybe, but if you’ve set a passcode like “1234” or “1111,” then, uh…well, let’s just say it’s a good idea to remove your cards. Better safe than sorry, especially since a thief could use your Watch to make purchases without needing your iPhone around!

Apple provides an easy way to do this if you want to, luckily. What you’ll start with is opening iCloud.com within a browser on your Mac.

After you log in, click on the big “Settings” icon.

On the subsequent screen, you can scroll down to see a list of the devices that are signed in on your account. 

Click on the Watch to select it, and then you’ll be able to see the cards associated with Apple Pay on it.

No, you cannot see my credit card numbers, so stop asking.

Finally, if you pick that “Remove All” option I’ve indicated above, you can confirm that’s what you’d like to do.

And that’s all there is to it! Your poor choices in passcodes won’t be able to hurt you after that, unless you had any additional data on the Watch that you wouldn’t want a thief to have. Say, let’s all just pick better passcodes, OK? I’d still suggest that you remove any Apple Pay cards from your Watch if it gets lost, but then at least you wouldn’t have to worry so much about someone looking through all of your very private photos or something.