Apple System Bug Might Cause Your Apple Card Application to Be Delayed

The Apple Card rollout has reportedly hit a small road bump that could delay the sign-up process for users who asked to be notified about its release.

Reports first started rolling in this week that users appear to be receiving erroneous Apple Card invitations that required them to enter a “correct” email address. That, obviously, lead to some confusion. Here’s what the problem is (and what it isn’t).

Apple Card Sign-up Glitch

Apple is apparently sending Apple Card email invitations to users who signed up to be notified about the card’s release process. The problem? These emails claim that the user did not properly enter an email address associated with an Apple ID signed into iCloud — even if they did.

While the email could be getting sent out correctly in some cases, most users who reported the glitchy message explicitly state that they did enter the proper Apple ID address. Based on the number of reports, the problem is pretty widespread.

Interestingly, users in countries outside of the U.S. appear to be receiving emails asking for them to apply to Apple Card. That’s obviously not right, since the Apple Card doesn’t appear to be rolling out internationally quite yet.

All of this suggests that there’s a bug or error in Apple’s database system.

What About Phishing?

If you receive an Apple Card invitation asking you for your email address, don’t worry. While that would normally be a major red flag, it appears to be a glitch in Apple’s system and not a concentrated phishing campaign.

Although, just to be safe, you’ll still want to avoid clicking on any links within emails that appear to be from Apple. Bad actors could take this opportunity to launch their own phishing campaign amid the confusion.

There’s a safe process to re-verify your Apple ID email address, which we’ll get to now.

So What Should You Do?

Apple’s email says that users should double-check the Apple ID email on their iPhones. Once they verify that the email is correct and signed into iCloud, they can go to www.apple.com/apple-card and reenter the email.

While it may be an extra step, we recommend going directly to that link instead of clicking on any links within an email. At the very least, double-check the link URL and email sender to verify that it’s actually coming from Apple.

Unfortunately, Apple says that new invitations may take as long as 48 hours to arrive in your inbox. In other words, your own Apple Card application process could be delayed if you got an erroneous email.

On the other hand, Apple is apparently aware of the issue and has reported it to their engineering team. So there’s always the change that the company could fix the problem and get the correct invitations out sooner.