I have been noticing that whenever I use Apple Pay at any POS terminal (tapping either with my Apple Watch or iPhone), the POS terminal language switches to French. I have not made any changes to any language settings in Apple Pay or Wallet or any settings on my Phone, my watch nor my Mac.
Could you please show me how to switch Apple Pay language preference back to English please.
Much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Apple Watch Series 4
I posted the question on Reddit and got the following detailed response. For me re adding the card (technically for a second time) seems to have at least temporarily solved the solution. The response I received elsewhere is copied below.
Cards powered by some payment systems (e.g. mastercard), provide language preference list to the terminal during communication flow. If received, the terminal changes the display language, this was intended to improve international shopping experience.
The value of this list is set during the card provisioning process, the initial selection of available languages is provided by the bank, but the priority might be changed depending on the language and region priority set on device during the set-up process.
“My advice for you would be to check the languages list on your phone, then try removing and adding a card again. If this doesn’t help, then it is probably on your bank and their configuration.
Another, albeit a less possible reason, is that your apple pay card doesn’t provide the language list, therefore terminal chooses to use the local language instead.”
I posted the question on Reddit and got the following detailed response. For me re adding the card (technically for a second time) seems to have at least temporarily solved the solution. The response I received elsewhere is copied below.
Cards powered by some payment systems (e.g. mastercard), provide language preference list to the terminal during communication flow. If received, the terminal changes the display language, this was intended to improve international shopping experience.
The value of this list is set during the card provisioning process, the initial selection of available languages is provided by the bank, but the priority might be changed depending on the language and region priority set on device during the set-up process.
“My advice for you would be to check the languages list on your phone, then try removing and adding a card again. If this doesn’t help, then it is probably on your bank and their configuration.
Another, albeit a less possible reason, is that your apple pay card doesn’t provide the language list, therefore terminal chooses to use the local language instead.”
Thank you for your answer @will_mcd123. Like you suggested, I removed the card from my wallet and add it back again without having to change any settings what so ever. And the language is reset back the English (my preferred language). Tested it at a gas pump and the menu was in English. Thank you for your response and the detail explanation Much appreciated!
Try deleting the card from your Wallet and add it back again. That fixed it for me. But I agree, it’s kinda annoying.
This has also been happening to me for the last couple of months.
The only language on my iPhone is English, but all of the merchant terminal prompts have started showing in French.
It's very annoying and on another thread there are over 200 people who clicked "Me too".
Did you ever find a solution to this, it is happening to me as well
Nope. Haven’t found a solution so far. Hoping Apple Support will reply soon.
Yep, after seeing that suggestion here, I did remove the card from my Wallet and added it back. I'll find out today when I try using Apple Pay whether that solves the problem.
Apple Pay Language Setting
