ApplePay tries to pay using card that’s not mine.

Question

Level 1

14 points

ApplePay tries to pay using card that’s not mine.

I was about to pay for a hotel booking using ApplePay on my iPhone. I reached the Confirm Booking page when I saw that the card number on the summary was not mine. Nor any card in my wallet. Nor any card in my possession or my wife’s. The first four digits shown were for a totally different bank. I phoned my bank but they couldn’t explain the anomaly. I used ApplePay yesterday and that transaction is now showing on my account, as normal.

I backtracked, cancelled the ApplePay effort and paid by entering my card details manually.

But what happened? Maybe I should have just gone ahead and let somebody else pay for my booking!

iPhone XR, iOS 18

Posted on Aug 9, 2025 10:24 AM

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Answer 1

Jeff Donald

Level 8

44,706 points

Aug 9, 2025 11:04 AM in response to iain0703

Apple Pay uses what is called a DPAN (Device (some call it Digital) Primary Account Number) which replace the number assigned to your physical card, chip and/or magnetic strip. For security and privacy reasons only the last 4 digits of the DPAN are available to the account holder on the device. Each device will have a different DPAN, so an Apple Watch will have a different DPAN than your iPhone or your wife’s devices.

So, effectively what happened is Apple Pay was working exactly the way it’s supposed to help insure the safety and security of your account during strange and merchant transactions.

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