Apple began rolling out Apple Pay in India on Tuesday, as TechCrunch was first to report. Its first banking partner is Axis Bank, the country’s third-largest private-sector lender.
What happened
The move brings the company’s payments service to the world’s most populous country after years of delays in a market dominated by the state-backed United Payments Interface (UPI).
Where the sources line up
The initial rollout is limited. Apple Pay supports eligible Axis Bank cards on Visa and Mastercard, but not India’s homegrown RuPay network. Acceptance will also be restricted to merchants and payment terminals that have been enabled for the service.
Practical impact for readers
Apple said the service would be accepted by “millions of merchants” across India, including Blinkit, Croma, Ixigo, Reliance brands, Tata 1mg, and Zomato. The company has worked with payment service providers including Cashfree, JusPay, Mswipe, Paytm, PayU, Pine Labs, Razorpay, and Worldline to enable Apple Pay acceptance.
Who should pay attention now
Unlike India’s ubiquitous Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, which lets consumers make instant bank-to-bank payments without relying on cards, Apple Pay is card-based and requires individual issuers and payment infrastructure providers to integrate with the service. This makes a broad rollout more complex. Apple’s commercial terms have also emerged as a sticking point with some of India’s largest banks, the people said.
What is still unclear
Apple is seeking a fee of about 20 basis points (0. 2%) on transactions, according to the people, a significant bite out of the roughly 40 to 50 basis points (0. 4% to 0. 5%) of margin in the payments layer. The fee structure is broadly consistent with Apple Pay’s commercial model in other markets, the people said. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card are not supporting Apple Pay at launch as negotiations over commercial terms continue, one of the people told TechCrunch.
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