After years of rumours and speculations, Apple Pay has finally reached India today. However, given its limited applicability at the moment, calling it a true arrival would be a bit of a reach!
Apple Pay is initially rolling with support for Axis Bank credit cards on Visa and Mastercard, allowing users to add their cards to Apple Wallet and make contactless payments using an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch. But that’s pretty much where the excitement ends for now.
There’s no support for UPI, which is by far the most important part of India’s digital payments ecosystem. RuPay cards are also not supported, and customers of some of India’s biggest banks, including HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and SBI Card, won’t be able to use Apple Pay at launch.
That makes the Indian version of Apple Pay quite different from what users in other countries have come to expect. In a market where people routinely pay for everything from chai to a flight ticket using UPI, simply adding a credit card to Apple Wallet doesn’t exactly change the game. Like at all!
It’s very difficult to visualise a scenario where Apple Pay would be able to compete with UPI in India, given the former’s chokehold on the country’s digital payments habits.
Still, getting Apple Pay into India is significant. We’ve been hearing about Apple’s plans to bring its payment service to the country for years, but it looks like regulatory requirements and discussions with banks and payment networks didn’t work out in their favour until now. Or I’d say, even now, considering they are just hanging by an Axis!
Currently, Apple Pay in India feels less like a major new payments platform and more like Apple finally getting its foot in the door. The real question is what comes next—whether Apple can expand support to more banks and card networks, and, eventually, bring the kind of broader payment experience that Indian users are actually looking for. I guess we’ll find out!
At launch, Apple Pay will be accepted by many prominent merchants across India, including Apple Stores, Blinkit, Chaayos, Comet, Croma, Zomato, and others.