Apple Pay disabled due to security modifications

Question

Apple Pay disabled due to security modifications

I am unable to add a credit card on my 2021 M1 iMac. In System Settings → Wallet & Apple Pay I see "Apple Pay has been disabled because the security settings of this Mac were modified." I can pay with Apple Pay if I authenticate with my watch, but not with touchid.

I ran through Apple's suggested solutions to no avail. After a lot of further debugging and log analysis I found the blockage. It thinks another user is controlling my PassKit. I am the only user. My MacBook does not have this problem.

macOS 27.0.1 (26A434)

LocalAuthentication:

"KEXT check failed"

Subcode=17

PassKit:

PKSecureElementOwnershipStateOwnedByOtherUser

Payment capability:

canMakeLocalPayments: 0

canMakeRemotePayments: 1

Boot policy:

Full Security

3rd Party Kexts Disabled

SIP Enabled

Signed System Volume Enabled

auxp/auxi/auxr absent

Safe Mode:

Same failure

Has anyone else encountered this failure? How did you resolve it?

iMac (M1, 2021)

Posted on Sep 29, 2026 11:21 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Jeff Donald

Community+ 2026

Level 9

60,860 points

Sep 30, 2026 3:16 AM in response to MontyWilliams

I’ve seen this reported a few times over the years. The provisioning is generally resolved by creating a new test user (can be deleted later), start adding a card, but don’t finish the process. Then switch user and attempt to provision a card. A warning pops up about another user and do you want to disable the other user. Say yes, disable and finish provisioning your cards. Then delete other user account.

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Answer 2

Sep 30, 2026 4:34 PM in response to Jeff Donald

While that suggestion worked fine:

Secure Element: OwnedByUser

CoreKDL/LA: succeeds

Apple Pay: works

3 cards added

The problem came back after a reboot:

Secure Element: OwnedByUser <-- repair persisted

CoreKDL/LA: KEXT check failed <-- failure returned

Apple Pay: disabled

Since I was able to successfully add the cards before I rebooted, I can live with adding new cards being disabled after I rebooted. The three cards work for payment and I can repeat the hack if I need to update my saved cards. I primarily use my MacBook which doesn't have this issue.

It appears Apple Pay authentication policy could not successfully complete its CoreKDL/SEP Kext Deny List check.

coreauthd

-> CoreKDL updateKDLToLatestVersionWithError:

-> finds installed KextDenyList version 31

-> obtains AppleKextDenyList.der

-> KDLIOKitClient updateKDLFromPath:

-> KDLIOKitClient performCommand:

-> kernel/SEP returns 0x4b444c09

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Answer 3

Sep 30, 2026 10:32 AM in response to Jeff Donald

That worked perfectly! Thanks.

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Answer 4

Sep 30, 2026 10:42 AM in response to MontyWilliams

You’re welcome and I hope you have a great rest of your week.

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Answer 5

Oct 2, 2026 8:51 AM in response to MontyWilliams

Let’s revisit this sometime after a full point update to MacOS. This worked perfectly in prior versions. But at least you have a few cards as a convenience. I hope you have a great weekend.

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