Mobile Finance

Apple Pay finally arrives in India

Apple Pay finally arrives in India

Apple Pay is finally available for users in India across iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Apple says support for Mac is coming soon. The offering’s first banking partner is Axis Bank, the country’s third-largest private-sector lender.

Customers with Axis Bank-issued Visa and Mastercard credit cards can add their cards to Apple Pay and use them at thousands of in-store and online merchants across India, as well as anywhere that accepts NFC transactions.

They can add a card directly to Apple Wallet via the latest version of the Axis Bank app. Alternatively, they can open the Wallet app on iPhone, tap the plus sign, and follow the steps to add an eligible card. At launch, Apple Pay will be accepted by millions of merchants across India, including at Apple Store locations,

However, as the TechCrunch website points out, the initial rollout, which follows years of delays, is limited. Apple Pay supports eligible Axis Bank cards on Visa and Mastercard, but not India’s homegrown RuPay (an indigenous payment card) network. Acceptance will also be restricted to merchants and payment terminals that have been enabled for the service.

In addition, this is a market dominated by the state-backed United Payments Interface (UPI) system, which lets consumers make instant bank-to-bank payments without relying on cards. Indeed a Ministry of Finance press release in April this year described UPI, after ten years, as the “world’s largest real-time payments platform, anchoring India’s digital economy”.

UPI handles the bulk of digital payments in India, where scanning a QR code to pay directly from a bank account has become commonplace. 

Apple Pay, by contrast, initially addresses a much smaller card payments market, and requires individual issuers and payment infrastructure providers to integrate with the service. This makes a broad rollout more complex. In addition, Apple’s commercial terms – fees charged on transactions – may be an issue for some of India’s banks.

Nevertheless, TechCrunch says, Apple Pay could appeal to India’s growing base of iPhone users, who tend to be more affluent and are more likely to use premium credit cards. 

Apple has been expanding iPhone sales, local manufacturing, and its retail footprint in India. India is also an important manufacturing base for the global iPhone market, making about a quarter of the world’s iPhones.



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