Credit: nikkimeel via Shutterstock Apple Pay is expected to launch in India next month, beginning with credit cards issued by Axis Bank, three people familiar with the plans told Reuters. Apple declined to comment. So, in effect, did everybody else. The service will widen to other lenders through separate bank-by-bank agreements, the pattern Apple has followed in other markets, Reuters reported on September 18.
Apple has also held talks with HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank, both larger card issuers than Axis, but has not settled commercial terms with either. Apple and HDFC Bank declined to comment to Reuters, and Axis Bank and ICICI Bank each said they had no comment. Axis is India’s fourth-largest credit card issuer, with 16.26 million active cards as of July, according to the same report. It is a meaningful book without being one of the two that set the market price, which is a useful place to start if the price is the thing still being argued about.
And it has been argued about for a while. Bloomberg first reported in February that Apple was in talks with Indian banks about launching a payments service. The Economic Times reported in August that the target was October, that the launch would cover Visa and Mastercard credit cards only, and that Apple had sought 15 to 20 basis points of each transaction while banks countered at around 10. The October timing has since been matched by several Indian outlets, along with the detail that lands hardest: no support for UPI at launch. India’s state-backed instant payments rail accounts for about 84% of digital payment volume, according to Reuters.
Apple is entering a country with a card product that has largely stopped reaching for cards. What changed is the plumbing underneath. The Reserve Bank of India’s authentication directions, issued in September 2025 and in force since April, allow card issuers to offer customers a choice of authentication factors, including device-native biometrics, rather than mandating an SMS one-time password for every transaction. That is the rule that allows Face ID or Touch ID to authorize a payment on an Indian bank card, and its absence is a major reason Apple Pay could not come to India earlier.
The commercial case has improved alongside the regulatory one. Apple’s share of the Indian smartphone market has doubled to 8% since 2022, Reuters reported, a small slice of a very large market that skews toward the exact customers banks issue premium credit cards to. Apple has run this play before, one market at a time, on terms it negotiates privately with each issuer. What it has not done is announce a date.
Neither has Axis Bank. For now, the most concrete metric for Apple Pay in India is the card count. Also tagged with
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