After well over a decade of launching in the US, Apple has started its payments service in India today. ‘Apple Pay’ begins its India leg with Axis Bank credit cards on Visa and Mastercard. HDFC, ICICI, and other banking partners follow in phases. UPI is not part of the launch and no timeline has been given for when it will be.
For nearly twelve years, Apple couldn’t launch Apple Pay in India, thanks to an RBI law that did not allow biometric authentication for card payments. That rule was changed in 2025, paving the way for Apple Pay’s India entry. Apple’s tokenised payment system, standard in every other market it operates in, simply could not function within India’s framework until that rule changed.
Since then, India rapidly pushed digital payments, with the UPI now omnipresent across the country and handling majority of the online payments. UPI’s numbers are staggering already. Over 2,300 crore transactions worth ₹30 lakh crore last month alone, across 550 million active users. Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm are built entirely around UPI’s QR infrastructure.
Apple Pay at launch is a tap-to-pay card wallet. An iPhone user can now tap at NFC terminals for credit card payments — and still needs a separate UPI app for every restaurant, auto-rickshaw, kirana, and street vendor they encounter.
Apple tried to build UPI into its payments product once before. A UPI-based service was reportedly in development in 2018 before being abandoned over data localisation requirements, NPCI approval timelines, and the sponsor bank structure UPI demands. Talks reportedly resumed around 2023. As of today, neither NPCI approval nor a sponsor bank arrangement has been confirmed.