Can’t add a payment method from a bank outside my region

I recently moved to Germany, and I’m using my Austrian bank account here since I used to live in Austria and both accounts are in euro. However, Apple won’t accept me adding my Austrian bank (or my US or Uk ones) to my German Apple ID. Whenever I ask for help from support they just tell me to consolidate my three IDs to the German one, but that’s completely not the question, and would also remove the only way I have to pay for my purchases (for some reason, my UK bank is still accepting my old UK address when I file it through my UK Apple ID, even though in fact all of my payment addresses are here in Germany of course now. Whereas Apple also won’t accept a payment address in a different country than the Apple ID, otherwise I’d just make an Austrian one.) Anyway, that doesn’t seem relevant at all, I think they aren’t having humans read my complaints. If I could just get a payment working on my German Apple ID, I’d be OK with shutting down the other two since I no longer am splitting my time between the UK & US, in fact given COVID I don’t even travel to those countries right now!



iPhone 7, iOS 14

Posted on Dec 18, 2021 12:47 AM

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2 replies

Dec 18, 2021 6:00 AM in response to 2factorIsSoBroke

You will frequently see declarations here (and recommendations made for them) that you cannot use a card from another country, but these are not supported by Apple documentation that I can find. Apple's official documentation currently does not say if you can OR cannot use a card from another country.


The statement below was removed from the November 10, 2021 version of the payment method document https://support.apple.com/HT202631

"Make sure that the billing address for your payment method matches the billing address for your Apple ID. In some cases, you might need to call your bank or financial institution to authorize international or online purchases. You might also need to confirm that the mobile number associated with your payment method is correct."


That at least hinted that it was possible to use a card from a different country as long as it was billed to you in the same country to which your Apple account was set. That statement has now been removed. Apple now simply does not provide any information about this and I guess you just have to try a hit-and-miss process to see what works, sorry.

Dec 18, 2021 9:10 AM in response to Limnos

Thanks! I've been actually phoning with my financial institution / bank, and they confirmed that Apple was doing everything right & they answered everything right, then Apple terminated the transaction after everything was essentially over. But that was actually for a purchase, and since then we've managed to make one. So maybe they will fix this too...

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Can’t add a payment method from a bank outside my region

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