Ask HN: Is it not possible to enroll for Apple Developer anymore?

You may hate this advice but it worked for me: have Gemini walk you through all the requirements for your given situation. It took 6-8 weeks for all my stuff end to end, including whatever agreement I needed for European sales, but Gemini was very helpful and correct on all the stated steps and gotchas. Yes, I’m American but I had a slightly convoluted situation with addresses and bank accounts, and going at the process blind would’ve been much less successful.

Send a cold email to the exec whose portfolio this falls into. Probably Eddy Cue or Craig Federighi.

That part of their business, along with the News part, has been like this for years. It’s incredibly frustrating to real people like you and I when they don’t have the (enough) equivalents on the other side. I don’t know why they do it, but it has to be intentional. Nothing helpful here, but I sympathise.

Just a heads up: there is a massive, incredibly detailed [dead] comment below by luyao_street that actually explains this exact issue. It seems to be caught by the spam filter, but it's a goldmine. The TL;DR of their advice, cheapest first: 1. Try adding the card directly to your Apple Account from an iPhone/iPad first (the web page often silently fails). 2. Use Safari (cards often fail in Firefox). 3. Stop changing variables (VPN + region switch + different browsers = triggers Apple's fraud algorithms as a 'takeover'). 4. Request a phone callback via the developer portal and ask them to complete the order manually. 5. Crucial flow check: Individuals pay at enrollment. For an Organization, you pay only after Apple verifies your info and emails you next steps. If your LLC is asking for money before that email, you are in the wrong flow. Also, for orgs, you must use a custom domain email (no gmail) and the D-U-N-S info must match character-for-character. Might be worth scrolling down and reading it before you give up!

I went through today's reports on this, because the failure pattern you describe is the one that's been repeating for years. Thread 126314 on Apple's own developer forums has been collecting it since 2019: several cards, all declined, banks confirming they never saw an authorization attempt. So the card is not the failing component — the order is. Four things that are reported to actually unblock it, cheapest first: 1. Add the card to the Apple Account itself from an iPhone/iPad first, then retry the enrollment payment. The web "Payment & Shipping" page silently fails to save cards for a lot of people (long spinner, then nothing, no error). March 2026 writeup: https://zenn.dev/take64/articles/8103de03365f91 2. Retry in Safari. Same writeup: JCB, Visa and Mastercard all failed in Firefox; switching to Safari alone let the payment through. Apple's own support scripts ask for Safari for these flows, and there are several account flows where it's Safari-only in practice. 3. Stop changing variables. Region switch, then VPN, then another device, then another browser — Apple's fraud heuristics read that combination as takeover, and the failure comes back generic with no reason ("airports and IPs: bad IP just gives you nonsense errors and unexplained bans; best is your phone's 5G shared to the laptop" is how the Chinese developer communities put it). Your list of things tried is exactly the ladder people climb into a deeper hole. 4. Request a phone callback — you have to start the request online, then they call you: https://developer.apple.com/contact/phone/ (US/Canada Mon–Fri 09:00–19:00 CST per https://developer.apple.com/support/worldwide-telephone-hour...). Your "phone support is unavailable every time" is probably the form not being reachable from your region, not the queue: the callback request is per-region. On the call, ask them to complete the order for your account and offer verification details. Apple's own support reply in 126314 mentions you "may be asked to provide verification details as part of the order completion process" — that IS the manual path, and it's the only thing that has moved long-stuck cases. Two flow-level checks, because they explain "the app refuses identity, the website takes identity and then refuses money": - Individual/sole proprietor pays at enrollment. An organization pays only after Apple verifies the enrollment information and emails you next steps. From https://developer.apple.com/programs/enroll/: "Once your enrollment information has been verified, you'll need to agree to the ... License Agreement and complete your membership purchase." If your LLC application is asking for money before that email, you are in a different flow than you think, and that flow has different rules. - For an organization: work email on the entity's own domain (gmail will not pass), a public functional site on that domain (parked page or a social link is explicitly rejected), and a D-U-N-S whose legal entity name and address match the registration character for character. The Account Holder verifies with their own document, so a Canadian passport against a US entity is fine — the name and DOB have to match your Apple Account exactly, and the Developer app flow additionally wants 2FA + iCloud login + staying on one supported device (iPhone/iPad with passcode, or Apple Silicon/T2 Mac) for the whole flow. If the app rejects the passport, don't re-upload; ask support for manual document review and keep one case number alive. Don't create a second Apple Account and don't hand documents to anyone offering to enrol for you — that's the usual route to a permanently banned account. I keep the longer version, with a source and date on every claim, here: https://telegra.ph/Apple-Developer-Program-stuck-at-ID-verif... — no signup, no tracking. If part of it doesn't fit your case, tell me which and I'll correct it.