Apple Pay finally launches in India after years on the sidelines

Apple is set to launch Apple Pay in India later Tuesday with Axis Bank as its initial banking partner, TechCrunch has learned, bringing its payments service to the world’s most populous country after years on the sidelines of a market dominated by UPI.

The initial rollout will be limited, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple Pay will initially support 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.

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.

Apple is seeking a fee of about 20 basis points on transactions, according to the people, a significant bite out of the roughly 40 to 50 basis points 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 expected to support Apple Pay at launch as negotiations over commercial terms continue, one of the people told TechCrunch.

Apple, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card did not respond to requests for comment. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Apple was preparing to launch Apple Pay in India in October, starting with Axis Bank credit cards.

Apple Pay is entering a payments market that looks markedly different from the U.S. and other card-heavy economies. India’s digital payments boom has been driven largely by UPI, the state-backed system that lets consumers move money directly between bank accounts.

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, will initially address a much smaller card payments market.

Nevertheless, 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. Those customers could make the service hard for banks to ignore, despite UPI’s dominance.

Even if Apple Pay remains a niche service, the economics could still make India meaningful for Apple. The transaction fee the iPhone maker would charge would give it another way to monetize its growing base of iPhone users in the country, the people said.

At launch, eligible Axis Bank customers will be allowed to add their credit cards to Apple’s Wallet app and use Apple Pay for online purchases as well as contactless payments at supported terminals, the people said.

An Apple Pay transaction could work at a terminal operated by an independent payments provider that has enabled the service but fail at another terminal whose acquiring bank has not, one of the people said. That could make acceptance uneven during the initial rollout, even for customers with supported cards.

The launch adds another piece to Apple’s growing business in India, where it has been expanding iPhone sales, local manufacturing and its retail footprint. Apple accounted for 28% of India’s smartphone market by value in 2025, up from 23% a year earlier, per an earlier report by Counterpoint Research.

India already accounts for about a quarter of global iPhone production, and that share could rise to 30% to 35% over the next five years, Indian English daily Business Standard reported last month, citing an Indian government official.

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Jagmeet covers startups, tech policy-related updates, and all other major tech-centric developments from India for TechCrunch. He previously worked as a principal correspondent at NDTV.

You can contact or verify outreach from Jagmeet by emailing mail@journalistjagmeet.com.

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