Apple Pay Service

 
NEW DELHI, August 10, 2026 — Apple Pay, the tech giant's contactless payments platform, is edging closer to a long-awaited India launch after nearly a decade of stalled negotiations, according to multiple

reports citing people familiar with the matter. The service, which has been available across the United States, Europe and large parts of Asia and the Middle East since its 2014 debut, has remained conspicuously absent from India despite the country's status as one of Apple's fastest-growing smartphone markets.

Talks With Major Banks Advance

Apple is reportedly in active discussions with three of India's largest private lenders — ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank — as it works to finalise the banking partnerships required to bring Apple Pay to Indian consumers. The company is simultaneously negotiating fee structures and payment-processing infrastructure with global card networks Visa and Mastercard, according to a Bloomberg report cited by multiple outlets. While no official launch date has been confirmed by Apple, industry reports have pointed to a window ranging from the middle of 2026 to the end of the year, with the timeline described as subject to change depending on how quickly commercial terms and regulatory approvals are settled.

A person familiar with the discussions cautioned that Apple has yet to make a final decision on its banking partners or a firm launch date, suggesting the rollout could still be a few quarters away even as talks progress.

A Phased Rollout: Cards First, UPI Later

According to the reports, Apple's initial rollout in India is expected to focus on card-on-file functionality, allowing users to link their existing debit and credit cards to Apple Wallet and make contactless, tap-to-pay transactions using their iPhone or Apple Watch. Integration with India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) — the real-time payments system operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) that now handles more than 8 billion transactions a month — is expected to follow in a later phase, pending separate regulatory clearance from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

That phased approach reflects the scale of UPI's dominance in India's digital payments landscape. UPI-enabled apps such as Google Pay, PhonePe and Paytm currently process the overwhelming majority of the country's retail digital transactions, from café bills to cab fares, and any new entrant seeking mass adoption will eventually need to plug into that rail rather than compete against it.

Years of Regulatory Hurdles

Apple's push into Indian payments has been in the works since at least 2018, when the company's services chief, Eddy Cue, first said Apple "absolutely" wanted to bring Apple Pay to the market. The effort was subsequently held up by a series of RBI requirements, including rules mandating that companies store payment-related data within India, and a 2019 tokenisation framework barring merchants and payment platforms from storing users' raw card details, requiring encrypted tokens issued by local banks instead.

A further complication emerged around biometric authentication: earlier RBI rules appeared to require verification through India's Aadhaar biometric identity system rather than on-device methods such as Apple's Face ID or Touch ID. That changed late in 2025, when the central bank introduced updated guidelines permitting device-level biometric authentication, including fingerprint and facial recognition, for digital payments — removing what had been one of the more significant technical obstacles to Apple Pay's entry.

Apple has already taken steps that observers see as groundwork for a fuller payments push. In July, the company resumed accepting credit and debit card payments for App Store and iCloud purchases in India, ending a five-year hiatus that began in 2021 when it had halted card payments over the RBI's tokenisation mandate. Compliance with that framework is seen as a prerequisite for any broader Apple Pay rollout.

A Competitive but Sizeable Opportunity

India's digital payments market remains fiercely competitive, and industry observers note that Apple Pay would enter as a relatively small player. More than 90 percent of smartphones in active use in India run on Android rather than iOS, meaning the potential user base for Apple Pay would initially be a fraction of the market served by existing UPI apps. Still, India's iPhone user base has been expanding rapidly, and the country has more than 750 million smartphone users overall, alongside some of the lowest mobile data costs in the world — factors that continue to make it an attractive long-term market for Apple's services business.

For Apple, a successful entry into Indian payments could serve a dual purpose: expanding its high-margin services revenue in a market where digital payments are now part of daily life, and reinforcing customer loyalty across its broader device ecosystem, given that Apple Pay is integrated across the iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and Mac. News of the advancing talks has also reportedly weighed on shares of some India-listed fintech companies, reflecting investor sensitivity to the prospect of a new entrant in the payments space.

Until Apple makes an official announcement, however, analysts and consumer advocates are urging Indian users and merchants to treat the reported timelines as directional rather than confirmed, given how often previous target dates for an India launch have slipped over the years.