Apple Pay outage reported Friday morning: Users unable to make payments across multiple apps
In the early hours of Friday morning, thousands of users reported that Apple Pay was not working, making it difficult to complete transactions on apps like Uber and Lyft. Apple has not indicated if any outage occurred.
In the early hours of Friday morning, it appears there was a widespread outage of Apple Pay, with user reports of service failures beginning shortly after 8:00 a.m. ET. Downdetector, which tracks outages for various services, peaked at nearly 2,000 complaints about Apple Pay during the first half of the hour.
Users reported that they could not complete transactions on apps like Uber, Lyft, and food delivery services, and were getting error messages about "account services unavailable" even after their numerous attempts to make payments. So far, there have been no comments from Apple that they are aware of the outage, and their system status still shows Apple Pay, Apple Cash and Apple Account as "available."
Social media reacts as Apple goes quiet
Outside of Downdetector, social media, including X , was full of posts questioning the functionality of Apple Pay. For many users, the service was seemingly completely out during the early morning hours, impacting everyday purchases and services.
Notably, this disruption emphasizes how truly ingrained Apple Pay is in many users' everyday lives. As this service is connected to critical services such as food ordering and transportation, even just a couple of minutes of being down can cause a significant inconvenience for a user. For this reason, users were reminded to keep a credit card in their pocket or keep their card numbers memorized for when a digital service goes down.
Despite the issues, Apple reports that all systems are operating normally, including Apple Pay, Apple Cash, and Apple accounts. Photo: The Desert Sun
Apple's growing influence in digital payments
Apple has made more aggressive advances in the payments space in recent years. The company in 2019 launched its own credit card with Goldman Sachs (not Wells Fargo as published incorrectly). Soon after, it launched a high-yield savings account to encourage users to enter its financial ecosystem. These services are deeply tied to Apple Pay, in which users are nudged towards doing their everyday purchasing within the Apple Pay environment.
Those of us working in the payments space, however, also know these types of disruptions emphasize the weaknesses of technology-based payment platforms. The same year another disruption of the service by Square left a handful of retailers without a lifeline for cross-over. While Apple has remained silent on today’s issues, the pandemic forcing user reliance on digital wallets will remain a topic of discussion regarding whether or not we are prepared for things like service disruptions.
