Differences of opinion with regulators have kept Apple Pay out of one of the world’s largest payments markets, but all signs point to an imminent launch for the mobile wallet in India.
One of the last remaining questions surrounding the rollout has been which credit card issuer would partner with Apple on the platform. While Apple is still in talks with multiple institutions, Reuters has reported that Axis Bank, the fourth-largest credit card issuer in India, will be Apple Pay’s initial partner.
This partnership would mark an important step as Apple brings its mobile wallet to the world’s most populous country—one of the few major global economies where Apple Pay does not currently have a presence. The company already has a growing base of potential users in India, with Apple’s share of the country’s smartphone market doubling to 8% over the past four years.
A Tough Nut to Crack
The iPhone experience, and the broader app ecosystem built around it, is one of the factors that has helped Apple Pay become the leading mobile wallet in its native U.S. market. However, India’s digital payments landscape presents a different set of challenges.
Unlike the card-centric U.S. market, the predominant payment rail in India is the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a real-time payments system that allows consumers to make payments and transfers using contactless payments, QR codes, and even phone numbers. Merchants have also rapidly adopted UPI, in part because transactions carried no fees for many years.
Barriers to Entry
As UPI grew to prominence, PhonePE and Google Pay emerged as major mobile payment providers, and the two companies now account for significant shares of India’s digital payments market.
That presents a potential challenge for Apple Pay, especially because early reports indicated that the mobile wallet would initially focus on facilitating contactless card payments rather than supporting UPI transactions.
More recent reports, however, suggested that UPI integration could be available when Apple Pay launches in India. If confirmed, that functionality, combined with an issuing partner, would give Apple Pay access to a much broader portion of India’s digital payments ecosystem as the country’s iPhone user base continues to grow.