American using Apple pay in England

June 18, 2024 1:30 PM

My daughter is in England and her Apple Pay has been declined every time she has tried it with several vendors. She has plenty of money in her account and never has issues with it in the US. I called Apple tech support and they weren't sure why this is happening. They suggested she update the phone and then change the region to UK in the settings. That hasn't helped. Any ideas on how to make this work?
posted by waving to Technology (9 answers total)

Is the credit card/bank it's connected to declining the charges?
posted by telophase at 1:36 PM on June 18 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Is the credit card/bank it's connected to declining the charges?
Well, I've transferred cash from my apple pay, which is linked to a debit card and therefore the money is already in there, she has a balance showing. I don't think it's linked to a credit card, she just has cash.
posted by waving at 1:43 PM on June 18

Apple Pay is linked to a credit card. At first it was linked to the Discover card, but recent new accounts are Visa cards.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:50 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

Best answer: So, when you say "Apple Pay", do you mean "Apple Cash", the one with the black card that says " Cash" on it (which holds a balance, mostly used for venmo-like interperson exchanges), or the white  Account "card", which also holds a balance (works like gift cards, I think?), an Apple Card (just the engraved  logo - works like a credit card, but can also have a Goldman Sachs HYSA attached to it), or do you mean a normal like Bank of America or Chase Visa in the Apple Wallet?

Apple's naming policy is for the birds - Apple Pay is just the name of the NFC technology stack, and knowing which card is actually doing the payment will narrow down who's declining the charge. AppleCare should have done a better job of this, but if it isn't one of the Apple Branded Credit Products, they don't have much more information than you do, unfortunately.
posted by Kyol at 1:57 PM on June 18 [3 favorites]

Basically, apple pay is *always* backed by some sort of credit/debit/debit-like card run by a financial institution on some payment network, and at the end of the day both (a) that institution can decline the transaction for various reasons, and (b) the payment network still has to work -- apple pay doesn't replace this. Green Dot is the one that runs the cards backing apple cash things. If she's been using this for a while, I wonder if it's simply that her card is one of the Discover ones (newer ones are visa as a prior answer alluded to) and Discover's not very common in the UK?
posted by advil at 2:03 PM on June 18 [2 favorites]

Not sure if this is relevant, but assuming this is specifically Apple Cash we're talking about, the terms and conditions say this in the section on foreign transactions: "Once you have registered your Apple Cash Account, and as a result, your Apple Cash Balance, you may use your Apple Cash Card for transactions outside the U.S. at eligible merchant locations that accept the payment network on which your Apple Cash Card is issued (please see Section 1(F) above entitled “Registering your Apple Cash Account with Bank“ for more information on this process)."

So possibly if she has not verified her identity with Green Dot Bank, that would be the cause.

But also, if "the payment network on which [her] Apple Cash Card is issued" is Discover, like some folks say, that could be the problem. If her card image shows a VISA logo in the corner (like this), though, then that is probably not the issue.
posted by whatnotever at 7:39 PM on June 18 [1 favorite]

FWIW, I'm in the UK and haven't heard of Apple Cash, I'm not sure it's available here?

We have Apple Pay, but for me that's set up by entering the details of my bank account's debit card into the Apple Pay app/wallet, and it then works the same way that the card itself would work - I tap my phone, it takes payment from my bank account, and the bank is responsible for approving it.

So if she's specifically using Apple Cash, and that works differently, she might be out of luck in the UK. The shop staff serving her might be unaware of the existence of Apple Cash in order to be able to tell her it doesn't work here - to them it might just look like a bank card-based Apple Pay app that's not working.

This reddit thread from 7 months ago says Apple Cash isn't available in the UK and this from Apple says it's only available in the US.
posted by penguin pie at 3:25 AM on June 19 [3 favorites]

I have apple cash, it does have a little logo at the bottom of the virtual card in the wallet that says Visa debit card and a note under it that says “Virtual Card Number Enabled You can now use Apple Cash to make secure online purchases with Safari AutoFill when Apple Pay is not available”, so maybe it would work enabling a virtual card number for this purpose too? It would be onerous for typing the number in each time and I don’t know if a pin would need to be set up though.
posted by gryphonlover at 5:56 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: What turned out to get this sorted out was she needed to set up Apple Pay (not Apple cash, already had that) on her phone and enter a credit card number. She doesn't have a credit or debit card yet (16 yo) so she needed to enter mine. My Capital One credit card wouldn't work because Capital one doesn't allow purchases through Apple Pay out of the country, just within the US. So I linked my bank debit card and that worked. Not sure if another credit card would have worked, I didn't have the time to try it. I would rather she not be linked to my debit card but for now it's what we'll use until she gets back home. But yeah, nothing we did with Apple Cash worked.

Thank you so much for helping me, these answers provided they way and I learned a lot from them. It took all week to get this done because I tried things that didn't work and she wasn't buying much during the week so the declined purchases were slow in coming.
posted by waving at 9:15 AM on June 21 [2 favorites]