Create Token With Apple Pay Without Payment

Question

I have two questions:

1. Is there a way to create an STPToken using Apple Pay without a payment? In my iOS app, the customer either enters in their payment info or decides to use Apple Pay when registering. When the customer decides to make a purchase (some time in the future after signing up), their card will be automatically charged. There is a method that I can call to check if the payment request can be made, but it seems that I have to actually run the payment and charge the card in order to get the token. Note that I can create a customer and saving a card without charging the customer if the customer enters in the payment info manually. This issue only comes about if the customer decides to use Apple Pay.

2. For testing purposes, when I do use the payment to create the token and charge the customer's card during the sign up process, I've noticed that the dynamic_last4 and expiration date fields do not match the actual card. I have verified this not just in my program, but also when I log into Stripe's website and check the customer's record. Although these fields do not match the actual card, I can indeed charge the card correctly. Are these fields being masked in some way by Stripe or Apple on purpose?

Answer 1

1. You need to invoke the Apple Pay payment process in order to get the Apple-generated token. While strictly speaking you don't actually have to process the payment to get the token, what would you do with it otherwise? Store it? They're not re-usable and you don't get the card details to otherwise store a customer/card pair from it for future token generation. If you're not already familiar with it, I would strongly recommend reviewing the Apple Pay Identity Guidelines doc: https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/Apple-Pay-Identity-Guidelines.pdf with respect to offering your customers multiple payment options including Apple Pay.
2. Yes, with Apple Pay the last4/exp values are disassociated from the actual card for security purposes.