Apple Pay or Google Pay silently failing on WooCommerce? Check these hidden problems

Apple Pay and Google Pay users may encounter issues when attempting to make purchases on WooCommerce websites, and these problems may not be immediately apparent through standard WooCommerce logs. Store owners may notice a reduced conversion rate, but the actual cause of the payment failures may be unclear. A study of public WooCommerce support threads revealed that Apple Pay issues frequently appear in unresolved threads for popular gateway plugins like WooCommerce-PayPal-Payments and WooCommerce-Gateway-Stripe. This prompted further investigation into the potential causes of these payment failures.

To investigate, there are several checks that can be performed within ten minutes. First, examine the domain association file for Apple Pay, which can be accessed at https://yourstore.com/.well-known/apple-developer-merchantid-domain-association. Using the command line tool curl, run curl -sI https://yourstore.com/.well-known/apple-developer-merchantid-domain-association to view the raw HTTP response.

Look for 301 or 302 redirects, a 404 error indicating that the association file is missing, a 403 error suggesting access is being blocked to the /.well-known/ directory, or a 200 response returning HTML instead of the expected association file.

Repeat the same process for the www version of the domain with curl -sI https://www.yourstore.com/.well-known/apple-developer-merchantid-domain-association. Sometimes, browsers automatically follow redirects, which can obscure the actual request being made to the original URL. If the two domain versions produce different results, a configuration issue may be present, affecting customers differently.

A free diagnostic script called Wallet Payment Preflight can automate these checks. It verifies DNS resolution, the availability of the Apple Pay association file, differences between apex and www host behavior, HTTPS certificate validity, HTTP to HTTPS redirect behavior, and basic HTTPS reachability. The script is written in Python, requires no third-party dependencies, can be run without a signup, and is licensed under the MIT license.

It can be executed with the command python walletcheck.py yourstore.com. The script returns a non-zero exit code when it detects a blocking problem, making it useful for continuous integration (CI) processes.

However, domain configuration is not the only factor that can cause payment failures. Some issues may require a human check. Investigate whether the payment failure began after a recent update to a payment plugin. Compare the date of the last successful Apple Pay or Google Pay transaction with the dates of recent plugin updates. If the timing is suspiciously close, the plugin update may be the root cause of the issue.

Another potential cause is duplicate loading of payment SDKs. Open the checkout page in a browser and inspect the source code or use the developer tools to search for the gateway's JavaScript SDK. If the same SDK is loaded more than once, investigate which plugin, theme, or customization is responsible for adding the duplicate. The browser console can also provide clues.

After opening checkout, press F12 to access the developer tools and examine the Console tab for any JavaScript errors. These errors can interfere with payment-button initialization or overall checkout functionality.

Finally, test the customer experience by opening checkout on a mobile device in a private or incognito window. Verify that the wallet payment option is visible and functional. Additionally, reconcile gateway payments with WooCommerce orders to ensure that all captured payments have corresponding orders in the store's system. Export recent payments from the payment gateway and corresponding WooCommerce orders, matching them using transaction/reference information, amount, date, and time, and other relevant order details.

Any discrepancies between the gateway and WooCommerce records should be investigated, as they may indicate more serious issues, such as money being captured without the proper order completion.

In summary, store owners should follow a ten-minute routine to check the Apple Pay association file, compare the apex and www domain versions, run the free Wallet Payment Preflight script, test checkout from a phone in a private window, inspect the browser console for JavaScript errors, compare recent plugin updates with the start of payment failures, and reconcile gateway payments against WooCommerce orders.

These steps can help identify and resolve payment failures involving Apple Pay and Google Pay on WooCommerce websites. For those who encounter more complex issues, a $12 troubleshooting playbook and payment-to-order reconciliation workbook is available for purchase, providing a comprehensive guide to diagnosing and resolving payment failures.