Visa today announced that Apple Pay is now live in Mauritius, allowing the bank’s Visa cardholders to pay with iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and Mac in stores, in apps and online. The launch went live alongside Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB), the country’s largest bank, which is enabling Apple Pay on both its Visa and Mastercard customer cards. African payment processor Peach Payments has also switched on Apple Pay for merchants in Mauritius through its existing dashboard.
This makes Mauritius the third country in Africa to get Apple Pay, after South Africa and Morocco. It is also the second African Apple Pay launch in a single month, following the South African Tap to Pay on iPhone rollout in early May.
Yared Endale, Visa’s Head of Eastern Africa, framed the launch as part of Mauritius positioning itself as an Indian Ocean financial hub. The mechanics are the same as in any other Apple Pay market. The customer adds an eligible card to the Wallet app, the card number is replaced by a unique Device Account Number stored in the iPhone’s Secure Element, and each transaction is authorised with Face ID, Touch ID or a passcode plus a one-time dynamic code. Apple does not see the card number. Neither does the merchant.
Why Mauritius before Kenya
This is the question tech-ish readers will be asking, and the answer is the same one we have laid out across the past two months of Apple Pay coverage.
We already explained when Apple launched Tap to Pay in Malaysia in April that Apple does not enter markets on volume alone. It enters markets where the card rails, the regulators and the partner banks all line up. Mauritius has a deep contactless card base, a small but premium iPhone-owning segment, MCB and Peach Payments as ready partners, and a regulator (Bank of Mauritius) that has actively pushed digital payments through the MAUCAS QR rail. It is a clean, small, finishable rollout.
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Kenya is bigger and messier. Card transactions in Kenya hit roughly KES 538.5 billion in 2024 according to the Central Bank of Kenya, which is real money. But cards in Kenya sit behind M-Pesa, not in front of it. The dominant rail is mobile money. The dominant tap-to-pay roadmap belongs to Safaricom’s M-Pesa Tap-to-Pay, which is launching on Android only because Apple has historically locked the iPhone’s NFC chip to Apple Pay. No major Kenyan bank has publicly confirmed an Apple Pay agreement. Without a participating bank and without Apple Pay as the base layer, iPhone users in Kenya keep doing what they have always done. Type a till number. Scan a QR code. Wait.
What changes in Mauritius
For Mauritian iPhone owners with an MCB card, contactless payment in shops, restaurants, taxis and pharmacies is now a normal phone tap. For merchants on Peach Payments, the same Apple Pay button now works in checkout flows. For Visa, it is another tokenised market where card-not-present fraud should fall. According to Apple’s official participating banks list, MCB is the first Mauritian bank on record. Other Mauritian banks may join in the coming weeks.
For Kenya, the practical takeaway is simple. Apple is moving through African markets one ready partner stack at a time. Until at least one major Kenyan bank signs and certifies with Apple, the Kenyan iPhone stays a phone you pay with by typing, not by tapping.
