~15s Delay in startSession

Question

Created Aug ’25

Replies 2

Boosts 1

Participants 2

Hello,

We are experiencing a consistent delay when initiating Apple Pay sessions using the https://apple-pay-gateway.apple.com/paymentservices/startSession endpoint. Below is a detailed overview of our setup and the issue.

Setup

Our web service is hosted in AWS and there is a proxy server between our web service and Apple servers.
We are passing the correct domain in the initiativeContext field of the startSession request.
The .well-known/apple-developer-merchantid-domain-association file is hosted on a different domain, which is also correctly configured and associated with our merchant ID in the Apple Developer portal.

Observed Behavior

When the same request is made from a local development environment, Apple responds immediately (under 1 second).
When the request is made from our AWS-hosted service, Apple responds with a valid session, but only after a consistent ~15-second delay.
The content and response are otherwise identical — only the timing differs.

We would appreciate any insights or suggestions from others who have faced similar behavior or from the Apple Pay team.

Thank you in advance!

Boost

Answer 1

hughdog OP

3w

@nikos_lapokonstantakis

Did you ever figure out a solution?

Having the same problem calling https://apple-pay-gateway-cert.apple.com/paymentservices/merchant using mTLS in my AWS environment.

I'm just using a simple httpclient..

builder.Services.AddHttpClient("ApplePayClient")
    .ConfigurePrimaryHttpMessageHandler(() =>
{
    var handler = new HttpClientHandler
    {
        ClientCertificateOptions = ClientCertificateOption.Manual,
        ClientCertificates = { applePayCertificate }
    };
    return handler;
});

Have no issues on local and struggling to find a solution.

Feel like there's a setting in AWS which is causing an issue but any suggestions would be great.

0

Answer 2

nikos_lapokonstantakis OP

3w

Hello @hughdog ,

I have not found a solution yet. Do you also face a 15-sec delay? As you said, maybe something is not properly configured in the AWS environment. Have you checked the time duration regarding the communication between Apple and your AWS environment (TLS handshake, server response time)?

0