iTunes email: Problem with Payment Information

Actually this is really sophisticated phishing attempt. In my mail I was advised you to go to settings, general, iTunes and App Store (and of course this option no longer exists on phones). At the bottom of the mail it then says you can update on a Mac or PC (both in blue and clickable links). And there is the phishing link.

What concerns me is that they knew my billing cycle (date and amount) allowing the algorithm to identify the storage plan - as mail correctly addressed the plan size)

After receiving two similar emails, I checked the email headers and found them both to have originated from an Apple ip address. The only url in the email was to a legitimate Apple address. And as mentioned elsewhere, the email had billing info and amounts. All of this convinced me that the email had indeed been sent from Apple. I contacted support. The 2nd tier support person found that they had an invalid expiration date for the my card. She suggested removing it and re-adding it. We had to do this twice - the second time she did something on her end. It seems to be ok now.

Just chatted with Apple Support and they got back super quickly - tl;dr, it looks like it’s a widespread, internal glitch that’s triggering these emails to be sent from Apple. So a legitimate email in most cases, but it’s being sent due to some internal error at Apple, so payment method is actually fine.

Exact response:

“Thanks for waiting, I was checking here at the system, and I was able to see that everything is fine regarding your subscription, this is a problem that is happening worldwide, most of our customers have been receiving some emails with the same billing error. I do hope our internal team solve this as soon as possible, I can assure you that either your subscription and payment method are fine.”

Update: After the two emails from iTunes I received a notification in settings today to update my payment information. Called the Apple support number at 1-866-712-7753, was transferred to 1-800-275-2273.

With the help of the customer service agent the credit card ( still valid for several more years) on file was removed and then immediately put back on as default payment. That did the trick, updated the payment and the $0.99 for the cloud subscription was immediately seen on my online bank statement. Everything is in order now.

They had no explanation for the emails sent through iTunes other than phishing emails because according to them 1) all emails are coming from apple.com, 2) subscription is for 50 GB.

Seems a strange quintessence though. However, glad that removing the original payment card and putting it back on fixed the issue.

Experiences like above.

Just received an email from Apple saying that my payment (Visa credit card) for iCloud had been refused. Checked my Apple account using system settings (Mac) and it confirmed that payment had not taken place. Instructions there said to change payment method via the App Store. Logged in there and found that the card had supposedly expired. That is not true. Deleted old payment info and tried to reuse card information and that was refused. Switched to PayPal (same card!) and that was accepted. Payment via PayPal for iCloud occurred a moment later.

I had to pick out the most popular recent thread as there are so many of these reported now. There ARE legitimate emails being sent out from Apple as a result of a known issue/glitch. They are NOT scam emails. I have attached the example I received. Mine was addressed from no_reply@email.apple.com and suggested there was an issue with my card but there wasn't. My card was being billed correctly with no issues. In my call with Apple, the rep said this was a scam and didn't come from Apple until I pointed out the body of the email addressed me by name, knew the correct subscription I had and knew the last four numbers of my card. I was that confident I clicked the link while on the phone which launched the settings app and took me to the billing section instead of redirecting to a phishing website. Despite this, he persisted and said I need to contact my bank. Not 10 minutes later I received a call back from Apple apologising. The "engineering team" had already replied to his ticket and confirmed it was legitimate email sent in error as a result of a known issue/glitch. We then dug deeper and found my the system was thinking my card was expired when it wasn't. My issue was fixed by removing my card from my account and re-adding it again and I didn't receive any more emails.

Continue to scrutinise emails and look for from address, do they address you by name, have the correct subscription details etc and if in doubt call Apple, but know that there ARE legitimate emails being sent out by Apple in error or as a result of a glitch. Hope this helps.

I ran into this recently, and in my personal case it was because my card was expired in my Apple ID vs in Apple Pay.

What I hadn't realized until recently is that my Apple payment in my Wallet and in my Apple ID were two different payment sources. Although my wallet was fine, the reference in my Apple ID was expiring. So for a while I kept trying to remove/re-add the card in my wallet (Apple Pay) when it was actually expired in my Apple ID area instead. In my Apple ID area, I was able to edit the expiration date and security code, and things worked well again.

Apple Pay: Open Wallet app

AppleID: Settings -> iCloud area (tap on your name) -> Payment & Shipping

That was my variant of the issue, hopefully it helps someone out there.

Note - I ran into this issue a few months ago as well, and I wish I had written the solution because it appeared differently. So it looks like different solutions might work for different people because I don't remember doing the above a few months ago, but it worked for me this time around.

Got the same email.

In the body it says:

“On 12/30/2023 you are scheduled to be charged $0.99 for iCloud+ with 55 GB of storage, but there is a problem with your payment information.”

The 55GB storage is a giveaway for a scam and phishing email. Quite simple, Apple does not offer any 55GB cloud storage. It offers a 50GB subscription which INCLUDES the free 5GB that comes with the account.

Hope that helps.

[Edited by Moderator]

As has been noted, this is a real problem internal to Apple. I was concerned enough that I added a payment method using Paypal, and then deleted the payment method with my credit card. That worked. However, when I went to add my credit card back as a payment method, the system said there was a problem and I needed to contact support, which I did (and heard that this is a widespread issue).

I’ve been getting the same emails for a couple of weeks, I’ve followed the instructions in the email but when I get to “manage payments” and “follow the prompts” there was nothing to update. Until today when there was red text telling me that my card had expired (it hasn’t). I deleted the card and then put the same card details in again and it appears to have fixed the problem

EDIT: the work around I found is to add the card on the Apple ID website instead of through your phone. Hope this helps.

I got this too. I went into my settings and it was fine. However I reopened my settings today and there was a notification within my phone. I deleted the card and tried to readd it and it won’t let me. It says the card is expired. It isn’t. It expires in 2026. When I put 2026 as the expiration date it says, “Expiration dates can't be in the past. The credit card expiration year must be between 2024 and 2044.”

how has Apple not fixed this yet? It seems to have been an issue for weeks now.