Apple Pay finally launches in India after years on the sidelines

Apple started rolling out Apple Pay in India on Tuesday, as first reported by TechCrunch. Its first banking partner is Axis Bank, the third largest private sector lender in the country. 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 Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

The initial rollout is limited. Apple Pay supports eligible Axis Bank cards on Visa and Mastercard, but not on India’s native RuPay network. Acceptance will also be limited to merchants and payment terminals enabled for the service.

Apple said the service would be adopted 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 accept Apple Pay.

Unlike India’s ubiquitous Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, which allows consumers to 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 wide rollout more complicated. 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 (0.2%) on transactions, according to the people, a significant bite out of about 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 continue on commercial terms, one of the people told TechCrunch.

Apple, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card did not respond to requests for comment on the launch. 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 has entered a payments market that looks very different from the United States and other card-heavy economies. India’s digital payments boom is largely driven by UPI, the state-backed system that allows consumers to transfer money directly between bank accounts.

UPI handles most digital payments in India, where it has become common to scan a QR code to pay directly from a bank account. In contrast, Apple Pay addresses a much smaller card payments market.

However, Apple Pay could appeal to India’s growing base of iPhone users, who tend to be wealthier and more likely to use premium credit cards. Those customers could make the service difficult for banks to ignore, despite UPI’s dominance.

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

At the launch, eligible Axis Bank customers can add their credit cards to the Apple 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 enabled the service but fail at another terminal that does not have its acquiring bank, one of the people said. Acceptance may be 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 is 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, according to 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% in the next five years, the Indian English-language Business Standard reported last month, citing an Indian government official.

Update: This story, originally published Tuesday morning, has been updated to reflect that the launch is now underway.