iTunes keeps asking to verify payment information

Apple support just tells me to delete the payment information and re-enter it. This has not helped in the past (I tried this 4 times) so I changed the card I was using. The original credit card issuer verified that there were no issues and they were authorising all transactions as per normal i.e. there were no holds on my card of any kind.

One thing that may cause this is that repeated requests to authorise $1 transactions can trigger a security alert with the card issuer. They will then hold requests for such transactions. I had one of these a week ago, but I assumed that everything was clear thereafter since I chatted with the security people at the issuer to confirm that the $1 transaction was legitimate. Note that stolen credit numbers are often checked by placing a request to authorise a small amount, a practice that the credit card issuers are aware of. Thus the security hold is legitimate and protects the user. Apple may not have taken this into account.

I have not made any purchases on my iPad or iPhone to confirm that the repeated request to reverify payment does or does not occur. Will get back when I try. However if the card issuer puts a security alert on the transactions and holds up authorisation, it may trigger the whole thing again.

It does look as if the new security arrangements introduced by Apple are causing significant issues.

I wish it was that simple. My 'phone number matched the one associated with the card so I am not inclined to believe that it is this simple.

Incidentally I had deleted and re-entered my original card data a number of times and the card issuer verified that my transactions were being authorised correctly. Whatever the problem is, it is associated with Apple and not the issuer.

Now that I have switched cards, I have not yet verified whether the problem still occurs but will when the opportunity occurs (I am not going to make spurious purchases on my iPhone or iPad to check whether Apple have a problem or not).

At this time I cannot verify whether moving to a different card cured the issue or not. However I do know that the phone number associated with the original card is correct.

Yes, I noticed the extra County field each time I re-entered the card data. Each time I entered the county (and in my case it split the county into "within city" and "outside city" which added further complication) it verified correctly. I tried making the incorrect county to verify that it rejected the payment and it did.... Oh and I used the account maintenance screen that your link points to (it is the same one that comes up if you go into iTunes Store and click Account and Change Payment Details).

I have an extra twist here. After entering the new card, the first time I used iTunes to purchase music on the machine on which I set up the card, it asked me to confirm payment. Tedious. Then we tried to purchase a TV show series on one of our Apple TVs. It prompted me to confirm my payment information (I had been warned by support that once I entered a new card I would have to confirm payment on each device the first time I tried to purchase anything on them). The kicker here is that you cannot do this on the Apple TV, you have to go back to your computer to do this. However once this was done, I made further purchases on the Apple TV without incident.

I have yet to go back to iTunes on the machine I used to set up the card and see if I still make purchases without having to confirm payment.....

I think I have determined the pattern.

Once you have set up card payment information and made a purchase, if you try and make a new purchase on anything other than the last device on which the last purchase was made, you will need to re-verify card payment information.

I have confirmed this with my iMac, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV.

Here is the pattern:

1. Set up payment info on iMac. First time I tried to make a purchase on the iMac I had re-verify card payment info. Made the purchases (in fact I closed iTunes and then went back to make purchases several hours later to ensure that it would still work - without trying to make purchases on another device).
2. I went to make a purchase on my Apple TV. Had to go back to iMac to re-verify payment. Made several purchases.
3. Went back later to iMac, had to re-verify to make a purchase. Made several purchases.
4. Tried to make a purchase on iPad, had re-verify card payment (this time on the iPad). Made purchase.
5. Went back to iMac, had to re-verfiy to make a purchase. Make several purchases.
6. Went back to iPad had to re-verify to make a purchase.

etc. for iPhone (i.e. first time I used it I had to re-verfiy) but then when I went back to any other device I would have to re-verify.

I also noted that if I did not use any other device, I could continue to make purchases on the last machine I used.

In other words the iTunes store no longer recognizes a group of your devices and will only authorize purchases from one machine at a time.

I checked my card issuer and confirmed the transactions had taken place with no problem. However they also confirmed that Apple were issuing a lot of $1 requests which I had pre-cleared with them.

Apple have some work to do.