If you are an Apple user in India and have not yet seen a payment issue on your devices, you very soon will. Apple has stopped accepting card payments, both debit and credit, for subscription payments and app purchases done with Apple ID in India. So, if an Indian credit or debit card was saved in your account to pay for apps you bought off the App Store, or to pay for subscriptions like iCloud+, Apple Music, or any other recurring subscription like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, or any other media content from Apple - it is not going to work.
This issue has cropped up due to the Reserve Bank of India’s new auto-debit rules that came into force last year and has since been disrupting all recurring online transactions. The change took place last month on April 18, as a support page on Apple’s website lists.
Social media has been flooded with Apple users complaining about the removal of their credit and debit card options from the payment options Apple allows in India for purchases. Users with saved cards are unable to make payments and are spotting an error message that reads - “This card type is no longer supported”. Even if you try to add another card, you will see the same error.
Apple’s support page that lists the available payments methods across countries shows that only netbanking, UPI, and Apple ID balance are the only three options that can be used for payments in India.
"Regulatory requirements in India apply to the processing of recurring transactions. If you hold an Indian debit or credit card and you have a subscription, these changes impact your transactions. Some transactions might be declined by banks and card issuers," Apple has explained on its support page.
So what are these regulatory requirements?
The regulatory requirements are essentially “the new auto-debit rules that RBI implemented in October” which have been limiting Apple from “receiving recurring payments from users in India via credit and debit cards”. This has led Apple to accept transactions through UPI and netbanking now.
Under the new rules, companies like Apple that allow customers to make purchases under its ID have to set up an e-mandate for customer cards and customers need to use 2FA or two-factor-authentication and also set up a fresh e-mandate for all recurring payments. And it is not just this, customers need to manually give consent every time they need to make a payment that is above Rs 5,000. Reports point out that “systems processing with the given requirements are yet to be updated to a large extent. All this is making it difficult for Apple to continue to support card payments.”
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