Apple has officially begun rolling out Apple Pay in India, marking a monumental milestone for the tech giant as it introduces its signature mobile payments service to the world’s most populous country. The long-awaited launch, which first went live on Tuesday following initial reports, establishes Axis Bank—India’s third-largest private-sector lender—as Apple’s inaugural banking partner in the region. This strategic entry brings Apple’s tap-and-pay ecosystem into a market that has spent years evolving under a distinctly different financial paradigm, introducing the service to a burgeoning base of affluent iPhone consumers despite complex commercial headwinds and entrenched local alternatives.
The initial rollout of Apple Pay in India comes with notable limitations and a selective scope. Currently, the platform exclusively supports eligible Axis Bank credit cards operating on the global Visa and Mastercard payment rails. Significantly absent from the initial launch lineup is RuPay, India’s homegrown and widely adopted payment network. Furthermore, physical acceptance will remain restricted during the early stages, limited exclusively to merchants, retailers, and payment terminals that have been specifically configured and enabled to process the service.
Despite these early constraints, Apple has secured agreements to ensure that the service will be accepted by millions of merchants spanning the breadth of the country. Prominent launch partners include major consumer platforms and brands such as Blinkit, Croma, Ixigo, Reliance brands, Tata 1mg, and Zomato. To facilitate this merchant-side integration, Apple has collaborated closely with a robust roster of payment service providers and aggregators operating across India, including Cashfree, JusPay, Mswipe, Paytm, PayU, Pine Labs, Razorpay, and Worldline.
For eligible Axis Bank customers, the integration process allows them to seamlessly add their supported credit cards directly to Apple’s native Wallet application. Once added, users can leverage Apple Pay to execute secure transactions for online purchases as well as frictionless contactless payments at physical retail terminals wherever the service is supported. However, because the rollout relies on a patchwork of terminal-level enablement, user experience during the initial phase may experience occasional friction. An Apple Pay transaction might process successfully at a terminal operated by an independent payments provider that has updated its infrastructure, yet fail at a neighboring terminal whose specific acquiring bank has not yet completed the integration.
The structural foundation of Apple Pay presents a stark contrast to India’s existing digital payments ecosystem, which looks remarkably different from the card-heavy economies of the United States and Europe. Over the past several years, India’s digital payments revolution has been overwhelmingly driven by the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Backed by the state, UPI is an instant, real-time payment system that enables consumers to transfer funds directly from one bank account to another without relying on traditional credit or debit cards. Scanning a ubiquitous QR code to pay a merchant directly from a bank account has become an everyday habit for hundreds of millions of Indians, meaning UPI currently handles the vast majority of all digital transactions in the country.
By contrast, Apple Pay is fundamentally a card-based infrastructure. Bringing it to market requires individual card issuers, banking networks, and payment infrastructure providers to actively build and integrate connections with Apple’s proprietary service. This technical complexity makes a broad, overnight nationwide rollout far more challenging. Beyond technical hurdles, commercial terms have emerged as a significant sticking point between Apple and several of India’s largest financial institutions, complicating negotiations and shaping the cautious pace of adoption.
According to industry insiders familiar with the negotiations, Apple is seeking a transaction fee of approximately 20 basis points, or 0.2%, on payments processed through the platform. This proposed levy represents a substantial bite out of the roughly 40 to 50 basis points, or 0.4% to 0.5%, of total margin available within the broader digital payments layer. While this fee structure is broadly consistent with the commercial model Apple employs for Apple Pay in other established global markets, it has met with hesitation from domestic lenders operating in India’s hyper-competitive financial sector. Consequently, major institutions such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card are not supporting Apple Pay at launch as commercial negotiations continue behind closed doors.
Representatives for Apple, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card did not respond to requests for comment regarding the launch. Earlier in the month, media reports had indicated that Apple was actively preparing to introduce the service in October, with Axis Bank credit cards designated as the spearhead for the entry.
Even though Apple Pay enters a market dominated by the state-backed UPI and faces ongoing negotiations with major domestic banks, the service carries substantial strategic value for the Cupertino-based company. Apple Pay holds a natural appeal for India’s rapidly expanding demographic of iPhone users. Consumers who purchase Apple devices in India tend to belong to higher income brackets and are significantly more likely to hold premium credit cards. This affluent user base could make the service difficult for banks to ignore over the long term, despite the overarching market dominance of UPI.
Furthermore, even if Apple Pay initially carves out a more specialized or niche position within India’s broader payments landscape, the underlying economics remain meaningful for Apple. The transaction fees collected by the iPhone maker would establish an additional, recurring revenue stream, offering another effective channel to monetize its growing hardware footprint and active user base in the country.
This payments milestone arrives as just one component of Apple’s broader, aggressive expansion strategy across India, where the company has systematically scaled up iPhone sales, deepened local manufacturing capabilities, and expanded its physical retail footprint. According to data from a Counterpoint Research report, Apple captured 28% of India’s smartphone market by value in 2025, climbing from a 23% share recorded just one year prior as consumer demand continued shifting heavily toward premium devices.
Simultaneously, India has transformed into a critical manufacturing hub for the global technology giant. The country currently accounts for approximately a quarter of all global iPhone production. According to recent reports citing Indian government officials, that domestic manufacturing share is projected to climb further, potentially reaching between 30% and 35% over the next five years, underscoring India’s expanding role in Apple’s global supply chain and long-term commercial strategy.