PSA: Apple Cash Is Down Today
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It appears that Apple is suffering a serious outage with its peer-to-peer payment system. Following multiple user reports in the u/AppleWallet sub-Reddit and elsewhere, Apple updated its System Status page to show an “ongoing” issue affecting Apple Cash users.
The note was posted at 10:01 a.m. Eastern Time, and while it notes that “some users are affected” and “may experience issues with this service,” the problem appears to be relatively widespread.
Users have reported numerous problems, including infinitely spinning loading screens when trying to access Apple Cash, send or receive money, or transfer funds to their bank account. Some have also indicated that the Wallet app tells them that they need to “Set Up Apple Cash” as if they’re entirely new users.
The issue also appears to be unique to Apple’s service, suggesting it’s an internal problem with Apple or its financial partner, Green Dot Bank. Other payment services like Venmo, Zelle, and Cash app are unaffected, so it’s not a wider fintech problem.
It’s also worth noting that Apple Pay appears to be unaffected. Transactions made with Apple Pay wouldn’t be impacted by anything on Apple’s end, since once the card is in your Wallet, it doesn’t require any communications with Apple’s servers to do its thing — the contactless payment is transmitted from your iPhone to the terminal and travels through the merchant’s network, just like it would when using a physical credit or debit card.
Adding new cards to Apple Pay requires verification through Apple’s systems. However, this appears to be working fine today, as do other Wallet-related services such as the Apple Card (credit card), transit cards, and Apple’s order tracking features. Payments from the Apple Cash virtual Visa debit card also appear to be working without incident.
There’s no word on when the Apple Cash outage will be resolved, but there are enough checks and balances in the system that nobody should lose anything in the process. Customers who were sent funds transfers before the outage may not be able to receive them right now, but they should be able to process them once Apple Cash is back up and running again.
