Apple’s new Apple Pay service was made available yesterday with the release of iOS 8.1. With this update, any iOS device that contains a near field communications antenna, which at this point are only the iPhone 6 and 6 plus (though 5S owners will be able to use it with Apple Watch), will be able to set up and store banking information that can be used with the payment system that Apple claims is far more secure than giving merchants credit card numbers and other bank account information.
Apple Pay should be relatively easy to set up using the Passbook App in iOS 8.1, where you tap the plus button in the upper-right to add a new pass card, and then tap the “Set Up Apple Pay” button; however, when doing this some have run into an issue where their iPhones show an error that simply states “Could Not Set Up Apple Pay.” The only other information in this error is “An error occurred while setting up Apple Pay” and an OK button to dismiss the error. Repeated attempts to set up Apple Pay will then result in this error.
This error may show up when setting up Apple Pay after you have installed iOS 8.1 on your iPhone 6 or 6 plus.
If this occurs to you, there are a couple of quick remedies that should work:
1. Log out and back into iCloud
Go to Settings > iCloud and in here tap the button to sign out of iCloud. Then sign back in, and try setting up Apple Pay again.
2. Restart your iPhone
While installing iOS 8.1 should have restarted your iPhone, sometimes the initial restart runs into an error or two for the new configuration, so a quick second restart should get you up and running. To do this, hold down the power button at the top of your iPhone until you see the slider to turn it off. Slide this slider to the right, and wait a few seconds for the system to power down. Then press the power button again for a few seconds until you see the Apple logo appear in the middle of your iPhone’s screen. After doing this, again try setting up Apple Pay.
