Issue with the ApplePay SSL server certificate

Hi support,

Since June 26th 2025 we are experiencing an issue with the ApplePay SSL server certificate installed on our servers in Production environment.

We are facing an exception error during the initializing of a payment session while calling the url: https://apple-pay-gateway.apple.com/paymentservices/startSession

The exception is Untrusted Server Certificate Chain:

javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: java.security.cert.CertificateException: Untrusted Server Certificate Chain       at sun.security.ssl.Alerts.getSSLException(Alerts.java:192)       at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.fatal(SSLSocketImpl.java:1915)       at sun.security.ssl.Handshaker.fatalSE(Handshaker.java:306)       at sun.security.ssl.Handshaker.fatalSE(Handshaker.java:300)       at sun.security.ssl.ClientHandshaker.serverCertificate(ClientHandshaker.java:1577)       at sun.security.ssl.ClientHandshaker.processMessage(ClientHandshaker.java:213)       at sun.security.ssl.Handshaker.processLoop(Handshaker.java:1010)       at sun.security.ssl.Handshaker.process_record(Handshaker.java:946)       at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.readRecord(SSLSocketImpl.java:1034)       at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.performInitialHandshake(SSLSocketImpl.java:1343)       at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.startHandshake(SSLSocketImpl.java:1370)       at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.startHandshake(SSLSocketImpl.java:1354)

It seems that the issue occurs randomly: we are experiencing this exception on most of our payment transactions, but there are some cases of users that have correctly paid on our site using this method and in those cases this error did not appear.

We installed the new certificate on our servers on July 3rd 2025 and renewed on Aug 7th 2025.

The new certificate validity is:

Not Before: Aug 6 18:43:52 2025 GMT

Not After : Nov 4 18:08:57 2025 GMT

I must specify that this issue is blocking the correct placement of AppleyPay orders of our customers.

Can you please help us find the problem and a possible solution?

Answered by CosminClaudiu in 857817022

Hi, we have found and resolved the issue. The problem was that we used only the leaf certificate to initialize the ssl comunication with applepay, and that caused the error in the majority of the transactions on our production environment. Note that this configuration was working until June 26th 2025, we don't know what happened/changed after that date. The solution was to configure and use the other 2 ssl certifcates (root and intermediate) into our .pem file.

Claudiu.

Accepted Answer

Hi, we have found and resolved the issue. The problem was that we used only the leaf certificate to initialize the ssl comunication with applepay, and that caused the error in the majority of the transactions on our production environment. Note that this configuration was working until June 26th 2025, we don't know what happened/changed after that date. The solution was to configure and use the other 2 ssl certifcates (root and intermediate) into our .pem file.

Claudiu.

Issue with the ApplePay SSL server certificate
 
 
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