Apple began rolling out Apple Pay in India on Tuesday, as TechCrunch first reported. Its first banking partner is Axis Bank, the country’s third-largest private sector lender. The move brings the company’s payments service to the world’s most populous country after years of delays in a market dominated by the state-backed United Payments Interface (UPI).
The initial release is limited. Apple Pay supports eligible Axis Bank cards on Visa and Mastercard, but not India’s local RuPay network. Acceptance will also be restricted to businesses and payment terminals that have been enabled for the service.
Apple said the service would be accepted by “millions of merchants” across India, including Blinkit, Croma, Ixigo, Reliance brands, Tata 1mg and Zomato. The company has worked with payment service providers including Cashfree, JusPay, Mswipe, Paytm, PayU, Pine Labs, Razorpay and Worldline to enable acceptance of Apple Pay.
Unlike India’s ubiquitous Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, which allows consumers to make instant bank-to-bank payments without relying on cards, Apple Pay is card-based and requires individual issuers and payment infrastructure providers to integrate with the service. This makes a broad implementation more complex. Apple’s business terms have also emerged as a point of friction with some of India’s largest banks, the people said.
Apple is seeking a fee of about 20 basis points (0.2%) on transactions, the people say, a significant portion of the roughly 40 to 50 basis points (0.4% to 0.5%) of margin in the payments layer. The fee structure is broadly consistent with Apple Pay’s business model in other markets, the people said. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and SBI Card do not support Apple Pay at launch as negotiations continue over commercial terms, one of the people told TechCrunch.
Apple, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and SBI Card did not respond to requests for comment on the launch. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Apple was preparing to launch Apple Pay in India in October, starting with Axis Bank credit cards.
Apple Pay has entered a payments market that looks markedly different from that in the United States and other card-heavy economies. The rise of digital payments in India has been largely driven by UPI, the state-backed system that allows consumers to move money directly between bank accounts.
UPI handles most digital payments in India, where scanning a QR code to pay directly from a bank account has become commonplace. Apple Pay, on the other hand, is initially targeting a much smaller card payments market.
However, Apple Pay could appeal to India’s growing base of iPhone users, who tend to be wealthier and more likely to use premium credit cards. Those customers could make the service difficult for banks to ignore, despite UPI’s dominance.
Even if Apple Pay remains a niche service, the economics could still make India significant for Apple. The transaction fee the iPhone maker would charge would give it another way to monetize its growing base of iPhone users in the country, the people said.
At launch, eligible Axis Bank customers can add their credit cards to Apple’s Wallet app and use Apple Pay for online purchases as well as contactless payments at compatible terminals, the people said.
An Apple Pay transaction could work on a terminal operated by a third-party payment provider that has enabled the service but fail on another terminal whose acquiring bank has not, one of the people said. That could make uptake uneven during the initial rollout, even for customers with compatible cards.
The launch adds another piece to Apple’s growing business in India, where it has been expanding iPhone sales, local manufacturing and its retail presence. Apple accounted for 28% of India’s smartphone market by value in 2025, up from 23% a year earlier, according to a previous report by Counterpoint Research.
India already represents around a quarter of global iPhone productionand what to share could increase from 30% to 35% over the next five years, Indian English-language newspaper Business Standard reported last month, citing an Indian government official.
Update: This story, originally published Tuesday morning, has been updated to reflect that the rollout is now underway.
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