Thanks, but it does not appear that you read my question carefully. Your answer is not relevant. I know how to change the default card (and had already read the article you linked to, and several others). And I did not ask about how to set the default card.
The question was: what card is used when Apple Pay is set up for an auto-payment?
In normal Apple Pay transactions, you can choose which card from the Apple Wallet is used.
In an automatic transaction, there is no way to choose which card is used at the time of the transaction, since, by definition, it's automatic.
In this specific case, it's setting up my mobile phone bill to be paid automatically using Apple Pay.
Nothing I can find in Apple Support, or anywhere else online, explains how Apple Pay works for automatic payment transactions.
There are at least two ways this could work:
- When the auto-payment transaction takes place, Apple Pay uses the current default card set in the Apple Wallet.
- When the auto-payment transaction takes place, Apple Pay uses the default card which was set in the Apple Wallet at the time the auto-pay was set up.*
It appears from having actually set up auto-pay with our mobile phone provider, that, while the mobile provider's auto-pay setup refers to using "Apple Pay", in fact setting it up generated a unique "credit card" number which is registered with the mobile phone provider, based on the default card in Apple Pay at the time I set it up. The auto-pay listing at my mobile provider, once set up, does not show "Apple Pay", but the unique "credit card" as the auto-pay payment method. If this is the case, then auto-pay works as described in #2 above. I assume the monthly auto-pay transactions are will be processed via Apple Pay, but the mobile provider does not show it that way. Once set up, it shows the auto-pay as being set up as a normal credit card transaction.
This also likely means that if I wanted to change the card used for the auto-pay, I could not do so simply by changing the default card used in the Apple Wallet. It appears that once set up with the mobile phone company, the automatic payment is divorced from the Apple Wallet, even if it still is processed as an Apple Pay payment. But I am not sure about this.
Part of the confusion is that the Apple Wallet and Apple Pay have been considered by me (and likely most people) as the same thing, with Apple Wallet being the only interface for Apple Pay. As I mentioned, it appears that, when used for an automatic payment, the Apple Wallet no longer has any bearing on Apple Pay.
Which raises another question: Once set up, does Apple Pay work for auto-pay transactions if the underlying credit card is removed from the Apple Wallet?
So, in summary, Apple has no resources which answer these questions:
- How do Apple Wallet and Apple Pay work when you use Apple Pay to set up an automatic monthly payment ("auto-pay")?
- What card does Apple Pay use when auto-pay is set up? (I think it's the default card.)
- What role does the Apple Wallet have once an auto-pay is set up? Does it determine which card is used for payment each month, or is the set up a one-time operation?
- What happens to the auto-pay if a card is removed from the Apple Wallet? Does this remove the card from working for an auto-pay setup? (Guessing it does.)
- How do you change the card used once an auto-pay is set up using Apple Pay?
One of the weaknesses of ApplePay is that there is no direct way to ask these questions. While I've read that ApplePay is robust from a security point-of-view, payment services also need to be able to answer questions about how they work. Apple has failed users by not explaining how automatic payment transactions work when this feature was enabled.
'* #2 would be the better solution, as most people would not want to accidentally change the card used for auto-pay, if they happened to temporarily change the default card in their Apple Wallet.
