Why Apple is ready to launch Apple Pay in India

As As predicted, Apple is in talks with three banks in India about introducing Apple Pay services there later this year, a according to a Bloomberg report.  This could give the company an even bigger footprint in India than its payment services have already built elsewhere.

The move matters for many reasons. Consider this: Apple Pay is already far and away the leading mobile payment system outside China (where Alipay and WeChat Pay rule the roost), which means there’s a very good chance it will seize a decent slice of digital payments in India once it launches. 

So, what’s the attraction to India? In a word: growth. 

Unlocking a trillion-dollar opportunity

Digital wallets now account for more than a third of global consumer spending and are on course to reach roughly a $28 trillion value by 2030. Even now, Apple already handles 9.5 trillion transactions for more than 800 million customers, generating an estimated $2.7 billion in 2024, according to Capital One Shopping Research, which also claims an astonishing 5% of all global transactions used Apple Pay in 2020. 

India’s economy is growing, as is its payments market. Digital transactions in India are expected to reach around $10 trillion this year, while the value of the broader fintech market should reach $421 billion by 2028. India’s digital payments market was worth about $6.83 billion in 2025 and is expected to exceed $33 billion by 2034.

Those big numbers mean Apple wants to play in that space. When it does, it will be able to build on the customer loyalty its hardware products nearly always generate, and pop some more dollars into its coffers. The market is ripe for such a move, given Apple’s record sales of iPhones and other hardware products there. iPhone now accounts for 10% of India’s smartphone market , and rules the high-end, according to IDC.

The Apple ecosystem

The mutual support Apple’s services provide to each other should be noted. iPhone sales are growing rapidly in India and the introduction of Apple Pay support likely means Indian consumers will be even more willing to invest in Apple’s devices in order to use the service locally; the move should also boost adoption for others in the Apple Pay channel, including all the merchant payment processing companies that support the standard.

Small business in India will no doubt recognize the opportunity to begin taking mobile (and card) payments for the cost of a second-user iPhone. This should help create another burst of energy beneath Apple’s already growing hardware sales in India.

Some obstacles remain

The problem in the plan is that Apple Pay does not currently support Indian debit or credit cards in Wallet. That’s because despite iPhone support for NFC, regulatory obstacles remain in place. India’s payments are also dominated by something called the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which is run by the National Payments Corporation of India.

The thinking is that Apple will need to find a way to integrate with UPI to introduce Apple Pay there. This, presumably, is why it is speaking with India’s ​ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank ​and Axis Bank ahead of introducing its ‌payment service around ​the ​middle ⁠of this year, Bloomberg said. The company is also allegedly in talks with Visa and Mastercard with this plan in mind. 

Local regulation is a little problematic, though Apple has benefited from India’s decision to allow use of biometric ID for payments, which came into force late last year. Apple might also need to build local data centers or partner with local banks in order to deliver the data localization India’s central bank demands payment providers put in place to operate there. 

It’s no great surprise that Apple would want to introduce Apple Pay in India. Its combined hardware, software, and services ecosystem is hugely attractive to consumers everywhere, so adding financial services to the mix makes sense – it’s why the company did precisely that all those years ago. The move also reflects the company’s years-long push into India’s markets, where it recently opened its sixth Apple retail store and continues to diversify product manufacturing as it seeks to secure its business against over-reliance on China.

That it widens and diversifies its market and maximizes its revenue potential in the process is just another silver lining for Cupertino’s iWallet.

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