I decided to pay my initial £100 deposit using Apple Pay. I selected my Barclays Debit card, and payment failed the first time. So I tried it a second time and it went through ok.
2 minutes later I got a text message from Barclays to ask me to confirm the transaction (along with another Apple pay transaction I’d done the same day.) I confirmed it.
On checking today, the £100 deposit has come out of a completely different card! (My Nationwide debit card.) The other transaction went correctly from my Barclays debit card.
This surely is a fundamental error that needs addressing urgently. Fortunately I had funds in my Nationwide account but if I hadn’t could now be facing bank charges. The fact that I have a text from Barclays is proof I didn’t make a mistake when paying.
It quite possibly is an Apple Pay error, and I’ve emailed them too, but I’d like confirmation and advice from Mondo of the procedures they have regarding this, and feel they should also be aware.
Not to pile on the defense team but it does sound like you have found the feature of Apple Pay where it’ll try and pick a supported card (so not a credit card even if it is your default card, no cards that don’t even support in-app payments) or pull out alternative cards if they are declined, Wallet knows they’re blocked or the card’s details are being updated at the time.
The application only gets what the Apple Pay process and payment sheet sends it so there’s very little it can do about this particular situation.
Where things do get strange is that you said both cards were charged. Did that result in two top ups appearing in the app? In either case, that does not sound expected behaviour but all we can really do is send you to in-app support chat where they can see your account information to try and find out what happened on the back end and with their payment processor.
Thank you Richard. I’ll bear this in mind and wait until I hear from Apple Support about it. (And no I was only charged once, from my Nationwide account.) However the SMS came from Barclays.
From Barclays
"We’d like to verify recent activity on your Debit Card. We will text further details in a SMS from 68989, where we require your response."
From 68989
"£100.00 at GETMONDOCOUK in United Kingdom, £8.25 at PRET A MANGER in United Kingdom. Reply Y if ALL of the above transaction(s) are yours, or reply N if you don’t recognise any or some of them. This response will be Free of Charge from within the UK."
I replied “Y”
From Barclays
"Thanks for confirming the activity was yours."
Alright, so it was expected functionality. The Apple Pay process likely saw the Barclays decline/temporary block and switched to a different supported card (in your case, Nationwide). Very easy to miss if you’re not looking for it.
I believe there’s an open Radar (Apple’s issue tracker) to make this more explicit and obvious. It’s one of those things that is generally fine in the US but a big problem in other parts of the world such as here.
The Barclays message is just their standard fraud prevention challenge.
