Having issues authorizing payment for Apple Developer Program

I have been trying for over a month now. I have tried 3 different debit and credit cards, spent many hours on the phone with support, opened several tickets with Apple Developer Support, and have gotten nowhere. Twice they tried to do the payment over the phone and informed me a couple days later that it was canceled and they provided no reason why. They've told me to pay over the Apple Developer app, which either says "Enrollment is not available for this Apple ID on the Apple Developer App" or "This is not available in your country". I am in the United States, so I'm guessing that isn't correct. I wish this horrible company didn't have such a monopoly on mobile applications so I wouldn't have to use them.

I was started to pay the developer membership fee from beginning for this month. Today, I was lucky and get payment confirmation.
Base on the passed operation, if you want to payment without problem, you need:

1. Any VISA/MasterCard can be used but the international payment should be opened.(some banks constraint)

2. Bill information must same as bank's information what you provided to bank include last name, first name. Especially the address, very important, you'd better to get the information from bank's welcome letter which is mail to you with debit card together. note: every address line should be same, or you can be rejected.

3. the email address and phone number, should be same as bank's information which is provided by you at opening card.

Hope it can help more developer.

I bought the "Apple Developer Program - Membership for one year" at 11:59AM today.

I then went to the 'chat now' button on the order summary because I thought I did something wrong signing up for the account, since it was still pending (I've never used Apple dev before, and Google's was instant).

The automated chat bot was painful to get through (tried for 5 min to connect to a specialist), but finally got through.

While I was waiting to be connected, I received an 800 call at 12:31PM that I decided to pick up, and it was actually the Apple specialist calling to verify my purchase/account.

We spoke for about 30 seconds, and as of 12:36PM my account is active.

While I'm not a developer nor that technical, I needed to set up the account for a project -hope sharing this helps someone...

It looks like Apple lost most of the support employees due to isolation or deliberately doing something to prevent new registrations from some regions.

We are small company from Russia who wants to create company account to upload one app related to our services. We can't obtain account for 3+ months.

We've payed for an account on 12 July 2020 (!).
It was absolute silence for a few weeks. When I tried to contact support they replied after two weeks that:

Thanks for your email. My name is *** from Apple Developer Program Support, and I will be assisting you today.

I understand your time is valuable, so I would like to apologise for the delayed response. It is certainly not the normal wait time for an answer from Apple Developer Program Support. We are currently facing a high volume of emails from our customers, and your patience is appreciated.

To proceed with your Apple Developer Program enrollment, we must verify the identity of the developer who will be using the account.

Please upload a copy of the developer’s photo ID. The ID must meet verification requirements for your region:

• Government-issued (example: One of the following:
Government-issued passport
If the person is an entrepreneur, an extract from the Unified State Register of Individual Entrepreneurs and a certified copy of his or her State Registration of an Individual Entrepreneur Certificate

)
• Valid (not expired)
• Includes the name in Roman characters*

• If the ID does not include a romanized name, you must also upload a solicitor-certified English translation.

https://developer.apple.com/contact/file-upload/

If you have any questions or need assistance, read our support articles or contact us.

To ensure we can assist you swiftly, you may quote your case number XXXXXXXXXX44.

Kind regards,
***
Apple Inc.

We've gather documents and I upload it. And silence again.
I wrote them after a few weeks again and on 11th September got this:

Hello ***,
Gurpreet here from Apple Developer Program Support, and I am glad to assist you today. I am overtaking case from my colleague ***.

We're following up with you about Apple Developer Program enrollment ID XXXXXXXX55.

Thank you for providing the photo ID. Your case has been escalated for further review to our senior team. A senior Advisor will get in touch with you when they have an update.

Please note that we cannot provide a timeframe regarding the amount of time it will take to get back to you. Your patience is really appreciated in this regard.

Please don’t submit a new enrollment or payment, as this could delay the current process.

If you have additional questions related to this matter, please reference case number XXXXXXXXXXX44 when you contact us.

Best regards,
***
Apple Inc.

And silence again. They even trying to tell you that they wouldn't tell you time-frame and don't you dare to contact them again until they ask you to:

1) Please note that we cannot provide a timeframe regarding the amount of time it will take to get back to you.
2) Please don’t submit a new enrollment or payment, as this could delay the current process.

So far we are trying to obtain companies' account for 3+ months.
It's just frustrating. They give 0.1 details, 0 follow-ups, 0 information during process.

Apple is a black box at this point. And it's not working ☹️.

@barkhood how did you "speak" on which support number? their support numbers are removed from the support page and i was lucky to have them but bots respond to you instructing you to email them when you call.

I have this same issue. I have been trying to renew my account for over a month. No one is responding to emails and I don't have the option of a phone call from the support website. Just emails only.

Same issue.
I receive a "Order Acknowledgement" email, but the card is not charged. I have been unable to renew my membership for almost a week now. This is the first such issue since 2012.

I have tried to enroll probably a dozen times now over the last several weeks. When I reach out to support, the "senior" support people always just say "We can't complete your enrollment and we can't give you any more guidance at this time". They won't tell me why. It's incredible! I think everyone on the Apple Developer Support Team deserves to be fired, especially the "senior" ***** named Ian. What a bunch of dummies! Just take my freaking money and let me put my app on the dang app store, you're hurting my business!!!!!!

I start to go completely nuts. I am trying to manage 3 jobs at the same time and it already have wasted my time 3 weeks and the Enrollment/Payment issue is still not solved. Support asking me several documents including me wasting a day in the Bank waiting for Bank Statements, scanned copies of several different documents, utility bills etc.

I start to believe that everyone using Apple products will be my enemies soon and they dont deserve to use my App if these Fruit heads cant do any better than this.

Lost a s-loads of money, time and my business partners are gone fed up waiting.

Can not recommend this for anyone.

One of the biggest companies in the world and cant even get their payment system working, Steve Jobs will turn in his grave.

The same problem. I am from Russia and have not been able to pay for my account for a week

I'm having the same problem and I'm in Australia. To make matters worse I have lodged two tickets and have no response after the initial acknowledgement and the phone contact doesn't respond.

I couldn't have imagined that renewing my membership was going to be such a pain. I have now tried 3 cards - all working fine with other international services (including app store subscriptions) and my order always gets cancelled.

Contacting Apple Customer care - they always suggest trying with another card. I am pretty sure this is a problem on their end as I have made sure to use credit cards that work and my order has always been cancelled. Cross-checking with the financial institution they say that no transaction was even attempted. Leaving no other option, I can only keep trying again and again. The sad part it is that it takes about 24 to 48 business hours to know that the order didn't go through which really makes it frustrating.

Reading this thread, it's evident that something is wrong either with the Apple's process or communication as so many developers are struggling. As a part of the developer community how can we escalate this to Apple so that it can help everyone?

Could someone from Apple Engineering team please get in touch so that I can provide more info to troubleshoot this and fix it for everyone? Thanks!

I'm having exactly the same issue :( Have been trying to register an account since August. I'm from South Africa.

Same issue. Been trying since March 2020. I've now been asked to upload photo ID but then support went quiet again...
From South Africa

For about a month now, we are has been experiencing difficulties in paying for renewal of membership in the Apple developer program. The same scenario. Attempts to use different bank cards or other changes were unsuccessful. Even cards bound to apple id and which were used a lot for shopping appstore. Support ("we are escalating your problem") not so useful so far.

And by the way, the bank claims that IPS doesn't really know or analyze anything about things like billing addresses.

Now trying to register fresh id and developer program, may be we will be lucky. Actually have no idea what to do next.

I was asked to renew on Sep-15 and received a bill after renewing, however, payment was never authorised. Then received another reminder that my membership will expire, renewed again on Oct-1, payment failed. Another reminder received on Oct-8, renewed, changed to another credit card - and it worked! I am from Germany, case number 101199979818

I solved my problem by turning to tareyev.grigoriy@gmail.com for help. The account was registered on the next day. For the service Gregory took a small fee.

Hey guys

I have been trying to pay for registration in the Apple developer Program for about a week, but still without success. As I understood from a small conversation with customer support, Apple never received my money. So it seems that my payment authorization fails all the time. But I don't know what's really going on.

Have any of you ever had similar problems?

Or maybe you just know what's going on and how to fix it?

I am also experiencing the same issue. I have been the developer for about 7 years and this is the first time I got this problem. My bank sees no attempts to authorize the payment from Apple, the support is mute. There is no reply to my messages. Have no ideas about how to solve the issue... I am getting nervous since the membership expires soon...

Has any of you given this problem? I've been trying to sign up for 6 months but Apple is blocking me.
This is the message that appears before payment:

Apple Developer Program
Your enrollment could not be completed

I've been trying for a month, I'm on my third payment attempt. I've contacted support but as I've just found out about this today I don't know whats going on yet.

Same from Brazil.

Tried three different cards, four machines and nothing.

Great job Apple...

I turned to the guy who wrote below for help (tareyev.grigoriy@gmail.com). He solved my problem, the account was registered in 3 days. For the service Gregory took a small fee. This is the only way that helped me.

October 2020 and the same problem, without notification, without notice or any other type of information about the payment of the plan

October 2020. Same issue here. From the US, tried 3 credit cards. A business credit card went through first, and I got the confirmation from Apple, but within minutes the bank sent fraud alert and apparently cancelled the payment even though I confirmed it. None of the cards would go through after that. I keep getting: "Your payment authorization failed on card •••XXXX. Please verify your information and try again, or try another payment method." for any card, including the one that worked in the beginning.