Apple Pay Launches in India with Axis Bank, Missing UPI Support and Major Bank Partners
Apple Pay Launches in India with Axis Bank, Missing UPI Support and Major Bank Partners #
Apple launched Apple Pay in India on September 30, with Axis Bank as its sole banking partner. The service arrives more than twelve years after its United States debut and after years of delays in India.
Axis Bank, India’s third-largest private-sector lender, is the first institution to support the service. Eligible Visa and Mastercard credit card holders can add their cards to the Apple Wallet app and make contactless and online payments via iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Mac support is expected to follow shortly. Apple says the service will be accepted at millions of merchants across the country.
Support for India’s RuPay card network is absent from the launch, as is the Unified Payments Interface. UPI, a real-time bank-to-bank transfer system backed by the government, accounts for more than 80 percent of digital payment volumes in India and underpins the market positions of rivals such as Google Pay and PhonePe. Apple Pay’s card-based model puts it in a different category from those UPI-first apps, targeting a narrower but higher-spending segment of iPhone users.
Three of India’s largest financial institutions, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card, are not participating at launch, with negotiations over commercial terms still ongoing, according to TechCrunch, which first reported the news. Apple’s standard fee model takes roughly 40 to 50 basis points from the margin in the payments layer, broadly consistent with its terms in other markets, though those rates have complicated talks with larger Indian issuers.
Apple Pay already operates in more than 90 countries. India’s payment market differs from most of those: UPI is free and government-run, which makes monetising through interchange harder than in Western markets, even though the smartphone market skews toward premium users who are disproportionately iPhone owners.
Apple Pay’s immediate addressable base is limited by the Axis Bank-only rollout and the absence of UPI integration. The company has indicated that additional bank partners are expected before year-end. Whether Apple can negotiate UPI access, and on what terms, may determine how far its payments ambitions in India extend.
Copy link