Discover Is Scaling Back on Apple Pay

Folks who use Discover cards with Apple Pay will soon find themselves with a more limited experience. This week, the company began sending out emails to cardholders letting them know that two key Apple Pay features will be going away in June.

To be clear, Discover is not removing support for Apple Pay; it’s merely removing some more advanced Apple Pay features that cardholders have enjoyed until now.

In its email, Discover says it remains “committed to enabling use of Discover Card in Apple Pay.” However, it’s discontinuing its integration with Connected Account and Pay with Rewards with Apple Pay.

This means that starting on June 4, Discover members will no longer see their non-Apple Pay card transactions in Apple Wallet and won’t be able to redeem their Discover rewards directly at the point of sale using Apple Pay.

Instead, cardholders will need to turn to the Discover website or the Discover Mobile app to see their rewards, balances, transactions and payments. They’ll also still be able to redeem Discover rewards through all the other usual methods, just not directly using Apple Pay.

Both of these features are relatively uncommon. Apple officially rolled out Connected Account in iOS 17.1 in response to the UK’s Open Banking initiative, and while over a dozen UK banks got on board, Discover and PayPal debit were the only US card issuers to join the program. While it’s not technically part of the Connected Account feature, Amex has provided nearly the same functionality by pushing all card transactions to Apple Wallet since Apple Pay launched in 2014.

Pay with Rewards is even more obscure. Despite being introduced in 2015 with iOS 9, it’s only ever had two takers: Discover in the US and Zilch in the UK. With Discover bailing, it leaves us wondering if the feature might go the way of Apple’s short-lived Pay Later service.

In other words, Discover cardholders will revert to the same experience as using a Visa or Mastercard with Apple Pay. They’ll still have the ability to make purchases online and in-person, and transactions made with Apple Pay will still show up in Apple Wallet, but physical card transactions will not, nor will they be able to redeem rewards directly at checkout.

Discover’s Retreat from the Apple Ecosystem

Although the company doesn’t provide any reason for these changes, it’s probably not a coincidence that it comes on the heels of Capital One’s 2025 acquisition of Discover. In discussing the change on Reddit, one user says “This has CapOne written all over it,” and even speculates that Discover and Capital One are “sticking it to Apple” over its decision to partner with Chase for the Apple Card.

It’s unclear if Capital One was ever seriously in the running for the Apple Card deal, but it was cited by some insiders as a contender due to its higher tolerance for subprime customers — of which the Apple Card has plenty.

Discover was also one of Apple’s original partners when it launched Apple Pay Cash in 2017. While the money is held by Green Dot, Discover initially handled payment processing for the Apple Cash virtual card. Apple dropped the “Pay” in 2019 to rebrand it to simply “Apple Cash” then switched to Visa Debit in 2022, which also helped pave the way for virtual card numbers in early 2024.

It’s also interesting that, while Capital One has supported Apple Pay in the United States since it first launched, it inexplicably remains one of the most prominent holdouts in Canada, which still boasts 127 participating card issuers — a notably impressive list for a country with only six chartered banks.