Apple Pay Merchant Capabilities

Question

Apple Pay Merchant Capabilities

Hi,

Could someone please explain to me how Apple Pay determines whether a card in the wallet is categorized as debit or credit, depending on the country.

I have an issue where I have configured Apple Pay with the supportDebit merchant capability. This is intentional, as I do not wish to accept credit cards. While this works fine in the UK, I am seeing issues in European countries where MasterCard Debit cards are incorrectly being categorized as credit cards and are not available for selection from the users Apple Wallet. Could someone please explain why this is an issue and how to resolve it?

Posted on Apr 22, 2024 6:57 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 22, 2024 7:40 AM in response to Steven_Curbison

Sorry I was assuming this was card present transaction. This could be a bug. Are you a registered Apple Developer? If so, you can receive support from Apple Engineers and/or raise this issue in their private developers community.

This is Apple Support Community, a public discussion forum for fellow Apple users (not developers) to connect and assist each other. There is a public developer community you could raise your question in at the link below.

Developer Forums - Apple Community

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Answer 2

Apr 22, 2024 7:11 AM in response to Steven_Curbison

Apple Pay doesn’t determine between debit and credit cards, your payment processor (gateway) does. When the processor detects the type of card it routes the credit card to the appropriate payment network (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover) and debit cards through different networks. Your issue is arising because Apple Pay does not use PIN numbers, but biometrics (Face ID etc). When a debit card is used with Apple Pay it’s automatically sent to credit card payment networks. There is no other option, because no PIN is available for debit processing.

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Answer 3

Apr 22, 2024 7:22 AM in response to Jeff Donald

When Apple Pay is being configured on the web, it requires a request object. Part of that request object contains an array of merchant capabilities. By specifying supportsDebit in those capabilities, I am effectively telling the payment sheet not to make credit cards available for this purchase. In my scenario, I am seeing Mastercard's being incorrectly categorized as credit cards, even though I know they are debit cards.

When I remove the supportsDebit option from the request object, the payment sheet then allows the Mastercard to become available for selection. How does apple determine if the card is debit or credit based on this configuration, as it does not seem correct.

This all happens prior to a payment taking place.

merchantCapabilities | Apple Developer Documentation

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