Apple Pay: iPhone 17 won’t add new Mastercard cards but Apple Watch will

palbert

I upgraded to an iPhone 17 in February 2026. Apple Pay works normally with some cards already on my phone, including Mastercard cards, but I cannot add certain new debit cards.

The problem:

• My Starling Mastercard debit card will not add to my iPhone 17. I get:
  “Card not added – Contact your card issuer.”
• The same Starling card adds successfully to my Apple Watch.
• I have now opened a new Monzo personal account. After activating the new Monzo Mastercard debit card, I tried adding it from within the Monzo app and received exactly the same message on my iPhone 17.
• The same Monzo card added successfully to my Apple Watch.

Apple Support have run a full diagnostic on the iPhone and said the device is working correctly.

Starling investigated and said they could see multiple Mastercard tokenisation attempts. They said the device was showing as not eligible and suggested the issue was with Mastercard/the payment network.

Apple have said the issue appears to be with the card issuer/payment network. Starling have said they believe it is with Mastercard, but they cannot contact Mastercard on my behalf. I have tried to find a way to contact Mastercard directly, but the only number I have found routes me back to the card issuer.

The confusing part is:

• two different banks are affected (Starling and Monzo);
• both cards are Mastercard;
• both fail only on my iPhone 17;
• both work on my Apple Watch;
• other cards already on my iPhone (including Mastercard cards) continue to work.

Has anyone experienced this, or know whether this could be an Apple Pay tokenisation/device eligibility issue rather than a bank issue?

oldernonethewiser

https://support.apple.com/en-us/108792

According to the above it isn't (shouldn't be) an Apple issue.

What iOS are you running?

Peter999_2

When I first got my Google Pixel 10, so android, no matter what I did I could not add certain credit cards and got the same "card not added - contact your card issuer". Obviously the card issuer couldn't help at all as it was fine on their end.

I found forum posts on the internet where loads of people had the same issue. Some people posted to say they left it for a few months and it would suddenly add the card. I left it 25 days, tried again and all the cards added fine.

born_again

Bank can contact Mastercard, as the bank is the provider of the cards. As a member of the public you can't. Raise a complain with bank.

palbert

Thanks for all your suggestions. I have been trying since February to add my card. I will keep trying but it is so frustrating. I think I will raise another complaint with the bank as they refuse to intervene to raise it with Mastercard. I asked them if the rejection was occurring within Starling's systems, Mastercard tokenisation or another part of the Apple Pay provisioning process. I was not asking for the security reason behind the decision, I was asking for the issue to be investigated and for the responsible party in the chain to be identified. Got again their standard response that they cannot explain further details and to keep trying to add the card from time to time. USELESS!!!