The Apple Pay, Apple Card, and Apple Cash services are currently affected by an outage. Some users may have trouble making purchases online or in apps. That said, the outage doesn’t seem to affect real-world transactions at brick-and-mortar retail locations.
UPDATE: 2023/12/20 10:46 EST BY ANDREW HEINZMAN
As of 10:45 AM ET, the Apple System Status page marks this outage as “resolved.” Interestingly, Apple claims that the problem was resolved at 6:49 AM ET, despite the fact that it was marked “ongoing” for nearly five hours. Apple has not revealed the full extent of the outage, and it hasn’t explained the “problem” that Apple Card users experienced.
Going forward, online and in-app Apple Pay transactions should work as expected. Apple Cash users should receive notifications when transferring money or making transactions.
This outage began on December 20th at 6:15 AM ET, according to Apple’s System Status page. Unfortunately, the scope of the problem is unknown—Apple says that only “some” users are affected, but because it’s still early in the day, very few people have actually sat down to make an online transaction. If the outage continues through the afternoon, we should begin to see complaints on social media.
Oddly, Apple hasn’t explained how the Apple Card outage will impact users. It simply says that there’s a problem with the credit card service. But Apple Cash users are encountering a very specific problem: money transfer and transaction notifications aren’t working.
A similar outage impacted Apple Card, Apple Pay, and Apple Cash services in May 2023. At that time, Apple resolved the issue in under an hour. Today’s outage has continued beyond 10:30 AM ET, meaning that the problem has continued for nearly five hours.
We’re nearing the end of the Christmas shopping season. It’s a very lucrative time for Apple, which receives a cut of every Apple Pay transaction. Presumably, resolving this outage is a number-one priority for the company. We’ll update this article as new information comes to light. If necessary, you can view the status of Apple’s services on the company’s System Status page.
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