You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Upgrade Iphone and AMEX and Apple Pay not working

I just bought iphone 16 and have added my Amex to my wallet and everything looks good and got confirmation email from Amex that we are all good to use apple pay. But when I try tonuse it the payment is declined, using physical cars works just fine though.


have erased and re-added the card, log out from Apple ID and logged in again and added the card.


according to Amex everything looks good and the issue should be with Apple!


I have 2 other cards (master cards) that both work with Apple Pay.

iPhone 16 Pro Max, iOS 18

Posted on Sep 28, 2024 11:54 AM

Reply
30 replies

Oct 17, 2024 5:42 AM in response to Niche_

This seems to be isolated to UK. Have you spoken to Apple Support in UK? They may have more insights into the situation. In US, AmEx had an issue back in June or July and it took a week or two for them to get it working again. No issues since, thankfully.


United Kingdom

0800 107 6285


Get technical support for Apple’s Accessibility features


Connect with British Sign Language support




Oct 23, 2024 4:11 AM in response to rickarda1979

>>This seems to be isolated to UK. Have you spoken to Apple Support in UK? They may have more insights into the situation. In US, AmEx had an issue back in June or July and it took a week or two for them to get it working again. No issues since, thankfully.<<


United Kingdom

0800 107 6285


Get technical support for Apple’s Accessibility features


Connect with British Sign Language support

Oct 1, 2024 6:35 AM in response to Dajmen

Does the decline show at American Express? Apple is not a bank or credit card processor. When a merchant accepts a credit card, any credit card including Apple Card, the merchant’s POS systems transmits encrypted data to the merchant’s credit card processor. This data then goes through the Payment Network Operator (Visa, MasterCard, American Express etc.) and then to your bank for approval. Data then works its way back to the merchant and the terminal displays the transaction information. Apple is not involved in any of the card processing.


Do you have a Visa or MasterCard to try?

Oct 3, 2024 10:48 AM in response to gabriel23

In my family there are 4 iPhone 16’s and they all work with AmEX and Apple Pay. I upgraded our iPhone through AT&T and the cards were previously in your old iPhones. So, everything pretty much transferred over, but each user had to enter their cards respective security number. My two grandchildren are authorized users on my card and my wife has her own card.


Are you using the same Apple ID on both iPhones? Do you use a VPN?

Oct 27, 2024 7:29 AM in response to Dajmen

Background: UK user with an Amex card on apple pay, just upgraded last week from 14 pro max (worked fine) to a 16 pro max (amex doesn’t work, all other cards do, and physical amex works fine).


I just got off of a chat with Amex support who told me that this is a general issue, and caused by Apple who “lock” contactless apple pay transactions for cards that have been added to more devices within a period of time than an internal apple algorithm allows. Apparently there is a cooling off period of a couple of weeks after which transactions will start to work again on the phone.


Im not sure I believe Amex support based on the way card payments work in the UK, but thought it might be useful info for others in the same boat.


The only thing that gives me cause to assign any credence to the explanation is that when I upgraded the phone, all the verifications failed because I hadn’t moved the sim over (hence no sms verification), so deleted all cards and added them back - effectively adding the same cards to the same device within about an hour of each other. No idea why Amex is impacted but multiple other mastercard and visa cards seem to work fine.


One other wrinkle in my case was that we moved house just before the upgrade, and I changed the account address with Amex and my banks, but hadn’t realised until I checked that the billing address on registered apple pay cards must be manually updated within card details in the wallet app - all my cards had the old billing address. I thought this might be the issue as remote transactions use card address postcode as part of the verification process but a test after updating the amex card details still resulted in a decline yesterday.


Any way, should the thing start working again in a week or two I’ll update this to let people know. In the meantime if anyone can use this info to shed further light with apple support, I’d be interested in findings.

Nov 2, 2024 1:46 PM in response to vinnythevid

Apple is not a bank. Apple does not and cannot approve or decline a debit or credit card for addition to Apple Pay. The decision to add a card rest entirely with the card issuer (American Express) and the Payment Network Operator (American Express). If your card is being declined it is not an issue with the software. If it were, everyother American Express account (on the same iOS) would be having the same issue. But they are not.


The issue is entirely with American Express. They are both the issuing bank and PNO. They not exactly why they are not adding your card to Apple Wallet for use with Apple Pay.

Nov 3, 2024 11:30 AM in response to Dajmen

Same issue in ITALY.


The same Amex Gold on iPhone 12 Pro + Watch 6 and on iPhone 15 Pro Max + Watch 9 worked fine.


I dismissed iPhone 12 Pro + Watch 6 moving and bought 16 Pro + Watch 10. On the new devices Amex is alway rejected even in shops and with POS I used with the old devices (about 8-9 shops/POS in Italy and 1 in Sankt Moritz - Switzerland).


Everything continue working fine on iPhone 15 Pro Max + Watch 9 with the same Amex Gold.


Of course I already tried to remove more times the Amex Gold from iPhone 16 Pro + Watch 10, but didn't work.


Thanx Apple!


[Edited by Moderator]


Nov 3, 2024 12:50 PM in response to vinnythevid

Reporting back - I tried using contactless apple pay with amex today successfully, so it seems that the advice given from amex was at least partly correct. I’m still not sure that apple is the cause, but the resolution - wait a week and try again, seems to have solved it.


of course, contacting amex support and flagging the issue may have triggered some reset process behind the scenes.


hope this is helpful.

Upgrade Iphone and AMEX and Apple Pay not working

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.