Apple Pay is double charging some customers

Apple Pay’s release has been dulled somewhat by the revelation that around 1000 debit transactions conducted by Bank of America customers using Apple Pay have been charged twice.

CNN reporter Samuel Burke was the first to blow the whistle, having tried the service as soon as it was released on Monday. Everything seemed to go smoothly until he checked his debit card bill, and found that every payment he had made with Apple Pay had gone through twice.

Bank of America referred the reporter to Apple, but the new payments provider is apparently too secure for their own good. As promised, Apple keeps no records of names or amounts for any of the transactions, so there was “nothing they could do”, a representative told Burke.

In the end, Bank of America refunded the secondary transactions.

So far, Apple has maintained an upbeat outlook: “Apple Pay is off to an amazing start and customers are loving the easy, secure and private way to pay. We’re aware of a Bank of America issue impacting a very small number of Apple Pay users. They’re working on a fix that will be available shortly and reversing any duplicate transactions.”

It has also been reported that there is a clumsy interface between thumbprint, iPhone and eftpos terminal at times, making payments more of a fuss than Apple had hoped.

With such a huge rollout and uptake of a new product, there are bound to be some teething issues. As long as the list remains short, most customers will likely stay with the service. But Apple should be working overtime to make sure any bugs are fixed quickly, or Apple Pay might be relegated to the same space as Google Wallet.

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