Apple is gearing up to launch Apple Pay in India by October. Reports say the plan is to begin rolling out the service next month in partnership with Axis Bank. Apple hasn’t announced anything yet. And, India is still missing from Apple’s own list of countries where Apple Pay works.
It’s a big gap to close. India is one of the largest markets where the service is unavailable, even as Apple keeps growing its business there. And there’s a twist most Apple Pay launches don’t have: India already runs one of the world’s most successful digital payment systems.
Axis Bank
Axis Bank is expected to be Apple Pay’s first Indian banking partner, starting with its credit cards. Apple has also been negotiating with HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, but reports say neither had agreed commercial terms as of mid-September. Apple intends to add banks one at a time after launch instead of switching on nationwide support in one go.
One bank is still a decent start. Axis had about 16.26 million active credit cards in July 2026, which makes it India’s fourth largest issuer behind HDFC Bank, SBI Card and ICICI Bank. India as a whole had roughly 122.9 million credit cards outstanding that month, with spending of ₹2.08 trillion.
At launch Apple Pay will support cards on Visa and Mastercard.
For users, the experience is the same as everywhere else. You add a supported card to Apple Wallet, confirm with Face ID or Touch ID, and hold the iPhone or Apple Watch near an NFC terminal. The merchant never sees your actual card number. Apple stores a token on the device instead.
Apple vs India’s UPI
Apple Pay’s real competition in India isn’t another phone wallet. It’s UPI.
The Unified Payments Interface is India’s default way to pay digitally. It moves money bank to bank using QR codes, phone numbers and other identifiers, and it now handles roughly 84% of India’s digital payment transactions by volume. In August 2026 alone it processed 24.51 billion transactions worth about ₹29.82 trillion.
Apple Pay seemingly won’t be plugging into any of that at launch. The launch version is card based and doesn’t support UPI. Apple would need approval from the National Payments Corporation of India, which runs UPI, plus a sponsor bank before it could offer UPI payments. So at launch it’s a much narrower product than Google Pay, PhonePe or Paytm.
A little history
- Apple was talking publicly about Apple Pay for India as far back as 2017.
- A UPI version was shelved in 2018 over regulatory, data localisation and technical problems.
- Talks with NPCI about a UPI implementation restarted around 2023.
- Then in February this year Apple was negotiating with Axis, HDFC and ICICI and the card networks, targeting a 2026 launch.
- October, according to reports, should mark the end of that process.
Why Apple Pay is now ready
Two things changed on the regulatory side. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed biometric authentication for card payments last year. This matters because Face ID and Touch ID are how Apple Pay confirms every purchase. Tokenisation across phones, watches and other devices is already permitted.
Money was the other sore issue. Apple asked for about 15 to 20 basis points of the interchange on each eligible credit card transaction, while some Indian issuers pushed for around 10. That fee comes out of the bank’s cut, not from the user or the merchant. It also explains why the service starts with one big issuer instead of all of them.
One of Apple Pay’s strangest launches
Apple isn’t entering a market that’s waiting for a convenient phone payment system. It’s entering one where QR payments are everywhere, nearly free and built into daily commerce.
Apple’s position is stronger than it was in 2017, though. Its smartphone share in India has doubled since 2022 to around 8%. That’s a sizeable premium user base for whom replacing a physical credit card with an iPhone or Apple Watch is still useful.
The bigger step would be UPI. If Apple gets permission to put Apple Wallet’s authentication and interface on top of UPI, Apple Pay goes from a nice option for Indian credit card holders to something people use every day.
Join the discussion