On New Year’s Day 2021, a burglar broke into my house, trashed the place, and made off with several items. One of them was my iPad Pro, which could have given the thief access to my Apple Pay information if they managed to get past the lock screen. Fortunately, Apple makes it easy to remotely remove your payment information from any device.
Remove Apple Pay cards in the ‘Find My’ app
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The Find My app can help you track down a lost or stolen Apple device, but you can also use it to remove your Apple Pay information remotely. You’ll either have to use a secondary Apple device registered to your Apple ID or the iCloud web app.
- Open the Find My app on an Apple device, or go to iCloud.com/find and sign in with your Apple ID.
- Select your lost device from the list.
- Scroll down and activate “Mark As Lost.”
- Follow the on-screen prompts to create a lock PIN for your device. Make sure you write this down somewhere safe, as you’ll need it to unlock your device if it’s found.
- Locking your device this way automatically removes all stored payment information
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This is the method I used to remove my Apple Pay information from my stolen iPad Pro. Unfortunately, I never got the iPad back, but if you’re lucky enough to recover your lost iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, you’ll be able to easily unlock it using the PIN you made in step 4.
Removing Apple Pay cards using the Apple ID website
Again, using the Find My app is the best option for dealing with a lost or stolen Apple device. However, as MakeUseOf points out, you can also use the Apple ID website to remove your Apple Pay information from a specific device at any time without putting it in “Lost Mode.”
- In a web browser, open the Apple ID homepage and log in using your Apple ID.
- Find and select the device you want to wipe from the list in your Apple ID account page.
- Select “Remove card.”
- Click “Remove” to confirm and remove that card from your device.
- Repeat for any additional cards or devices.