Double

Published 3:24 pm, Wednesday, October 22, 2014

About 1,000 Bank of America Corp. debit transactions on Apple Inc. 's new mobile-payment system were mistakenly duplicated.

'We apologize for the inconvenience and are correcting this issue immediately and all duplicates will be refunded,' said Tara Burke, a spokeswoman for the Charlotte, N.C., bank. Burke declined to say how many accounts were affected or on what network the transactions were processed.

The error was attributed to a processing mistake that occurred between the bank and at least one payment network, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because details of the malfunction aren't public. The issue was being resolved Wednesday, the person said.

'We're aware of a Bank of America issue impacting a very small number of Apple Pay users,' said Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Cupertino's Apple. 'They're working on a fix that will be available shortly and reversing any duplicate transactions.'

She said Apple Pay, which debuted Monday, 'is off to an amazing start' and that customers have been receptive to it.

As part of the service, Apple joined with the biggest U.S. card issuers including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. and networks such as Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and American Express Co. Participating merchants include McDonald's Corp. and Walgreen Co.

Jim Issokson, a spokesman for MasterCard, and Paul Cohen, a spokesman for Visa, didn't immediately return phone calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Apple Pay is part of Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook 's push to expand the company into new businesses while upgrading core products, including the iPhone and iPad.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were introduced last month with Apple selling more than 10 million of the devices in their first weekend. The rollout was marred by snafus with updates to the iOS 8 mobile-operating system and some user complaints that the 6 Plus would bend when sat upon.

The Apple Pay billing errors were reported earlier Wednesday by CNN Money.

Elizabeth Dexheimer and Tim Higgins are Bloomberg writers. E-mail: edexheimer@bloomberg.net, thiggins21@bloomberg.net