Apple is preparing to launch Apple Pay in India as soon as October, beginning with Axis Bank credit cards. The move would bring Apple’s payment service to one of the largest major economies where it is still unavailable. Apple and Axis Bank have not publicly confirmed the launch.
The initial rollout would be deliberately narrow. Axis Bank, India’s fourth-largest credit card issuer, had 16.26 million active cards in July, according to Reserve Bank of India data. Apple is also in talks with larger rivals HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, although commercial agreements have not yet been finalized. Additional banks would be added individually over time, following Apple Pay’s rollout model in other countries.
Apple Pay stores tokenized versions of eligible payment cards in Apple Wallet, allowing users to pay at compatible contactless terminals with an iPhone or Apple Watch and authenticate transactions through Face ID or Touch ID. A regulatory change by the Reserve Bank of India last year allowing biometric authentication for card payments helped remove a key obstacle to bringing the service to Indian bank cards.
But Apple will enter a payment market unlike most of its existing territories. India’s homegrown Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, accounts for 84% of digital-payment transactions by volume and allows consumers to pay through QR codes, phone numbers and contactless methods. Apple Pay will therefore compete less as a replacement for digital payments than as an alternative specifically for card-based transactions.
The timing also reflects Apple’s growing hardware footprint. Its share of India’s smartphone market has doubled since 2022 to around 8%, according to Counterpoint Research. That gives Apple a larger installed base from which to build Wallet and payment services, even if Android devices continue to dominate the broader market.