Apple Pay is now live in India, the world’s most populous country. But at launch it works with exactly one bank, and it skips the payment system most Indians use every day.
Apple began rolling out the service on Tuesday. Axis Bank, the country’s third-largest private-sector lender, is its only banking partner so far. That makes this less a nationwide switch-on and more a toe in the water, arriving after years of delays in a market that runs on the state-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
One bank, two card networks, zero RuPay
The limits are clear. Apple Pay supports eligible Axis Bank cards on Visa and Mastercard. India’s homegrown RuPay network isn’t included.
Eligible Axis Bank customers can add their credit cards to Apple’s Wallet app. From there, they can use Apple Pay for online purchases and for contactless payments at supported terminals, people familiar with the launch said.
If you bank with HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank or SBI Card, you’re out of luck for now. None of the three is supporting Apple Pay at launch, because talks over commercial terms are still going on, one of the people said.
The 20 basis point problem
Money is the sticking point. Apple is seeking a fee of about 20 basis points (0.2%) on transactions, according to the people. That’s a big bite when the payments layer only carries roughly 40 to 50 basis points (0.4% to 0.5%) of margin.
Apple isn’t asking for anything unusual by its own standards. The fee structure is broadly consistent with Apple Pay’s commercial model in other markets, the people said. But Indian banks have spent years in a system where bank-to-bank transfers don’t need Apple at all, and several of the biggest ones clearly aren’t in a hurry to sign.
Apple, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and SBI Card did not respond to requests for comment on the launch.
Your card might work at one shop and fail at the next
This is the part that could frustrate early users. Acceptance is limited to merchants and payment terminals that have been enabled for the service, and that setup isn’t uniform.
An Apple Pay transaction could go through at a terminal run by an independent payments provider that has enabled the service, then fail at another terminal whose acquiring bank hasn’t, one of the people said. So even with a supported card in your Wallet, you’ll probably want a backup ready at the counter for a while.
Apple said the service would be accepted by “millions of merchants” across India, including Blinkit, Croma, Ixigo, Reliance brands, Tata 1mg and Zomato. It has worked with payment service providers including Cashfree, JusPay, Mswipe, Paytm, PayU, Pine Labs, Razorpay and Worldline to enable acceptance.
Why UPI makes this so hard
India’s payments market doesn’t look like the U.S. or other card-heavy economies. The country’s digital payments boom has been driven largely by UPI, which lets consumers move money directly between bank accounts without touching a card.
Scanning a QR code to pay straight from your bank account is commonplace there, and UPI handles the bulk of digital payments. Apple Pay is card-based. Every issuer and payment infrastructure provider has to integrate with it individually, which makes a broad rollout a lot messier. It also means Apple is starting out in a much smaller card payments market.
Apple is betting on the premium crowd
Apple’s real pitch here is to India's growing base of iPhone owners. They tend to be more affluent and are more likely to carry premium credit cards. If enough of them want to tap and pay, banks may find the service hard to ignore, even with UPI dominating everything else.
And Apple doesn’t need Apple Pay to become mainstream for this to pay off. The transaction fee gives it another way to monetize its growing iPhone user base in the country, the people said.
That base keeps growing. Apple accounted for 28% of India’s smartphone market by value in 2025, up from 23% a year earlier, according to an earlier report by Counterpoint Research. India already makes about a quarter of the world’s iPhones, and that share could rise to 30% to 35% over the next five years, Indian English daily Business Standard reported last month, citing an Indian government official.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Apple was preparing to launch Apple Pay in India in October, starting with Axis Bank credit cards. The launch came a little earlier than that, but the terms haven’t changed. If you’re an Axis Bank Visa or Mastercard holder with an iPhone, add your card and try it. Everyone else will have to keep scanning QR codes until their bank agrees to Apple’s 0.2%.
