Apple Pay has launched in India through a partnership with Axis Bank, bringing Apple’s contactless payment service to the country for the first time. The initial rollout supports eligible Axis Bank Visa and Mastercard credit cards.
The Apple Pay India launch lets customers make payments in stores, apps and on websites using supported Apple devices. Axis Bank cardholders can add an eligible card through the bank’s mobile app or Apple Wallet and authenticate transactions with Face ID, Touch ID or their device passcode.
Apple Pay India starts with Axis Bank cards
At launch, the service is limited to Axis Bank-issued Visa and Mastercard credit cards. RuPay cards are not supported, while agreements with other Indian banks have not yet been announced.
Reuters reported that Axis Bank had 16.3 million credit cards outstanding in August, compared with approximately 124 million cards nationwide. The Indian Express, citing Reserve Bank of India data, placed the bank’s August total at 16.29 million and overall Indian credit cards at 124.05 million.
This gives Apple Pay a meaningful starting base, although its reach remains narrower than established Indian payment platforms. Apple has held discussions with HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, Reuters reported, but commercial arrangements with those lenders had not been finalised.
How Apple Pay works in India
For an in-store payment, the user authenticates on an iPhone or Apple Watch and holds the device near an NFC-enabled card terminal. The service also supports participating apps and online checkouts on iPhone and iPad. Support for Mac is expected later.
Apple Pay does not require customers to type their card PIN or a one-time password during the checkout flow described for the service. Authentication instead occurs on the Apple device. Actual card numbers are not stored on the device or Apple’s servers, according to Apple’s security description cited by Moneycontrol. A unique device account number and tokenisation are used in place of sharing the original card details with merchants.
Moneycontrol reported that the minimum supported hardware and software include an iPhone XR or later running iOS 18 or newer, and an Apple Watch Series 6 or later running watchOS 11 or newer.
Entering a UPI-dominated market
Apple Pay enters an Indian payments market dominated by the Unified Payments Interface. Reuters cited an International Monetary Fund report saying UPI accounts for 84% of India’s digital-payment volumes.
Apple Pay is not a replacement for UPI in its initial form. It operates through eligible credit cards and NFC card terminals, putting it closer to existing contactless card-payment functions available through Google Pay and Samsung Pay.
Its main distinction is integration across Apple hardware, apps and web checkouts. The service may gain broader relevance if Apple adds more issuing banks and card networks, but its first phase remains limited to qualifying Axis Bank customers.
Google Trends interest
Google Trends’ India Trending Now page showed “apple pay india” with more than 20,000 searches, up over 1,000% and marked active when checked on October 1. These are rounded trending-search figures indicating a recent surge, not total search volume.
