Apple Pay to Launch in India by October

Very happy to hear that it is launching in my country soon. I see no reason for debit cards to be not supported and hopefully that too will be available from launch.

If there's no UPI support, is there really even a point?

I know UPI is the de-facto champion of digital payments, but plenty of people use cards, too. I use different cards for different rewards (fuel, cashback from groceries etc.). I'd wager iPhone owners might even be more likely to have a credit card.

If there's no UPI support, is there really even a point?

This will allow foreign business travelers to Tier 1 cities to use their preferred payment. (No foreigner that I know wants to deal with Pocket UPI ... which I'm not even sure supports foreign bank accounts.)

Once that becomes popular, local iPhone users will naturally request UPI support.

UPI is nice and convenient, but it’s a bit more cumbersome to use than Apple Pay. Something I’ve tried to explain to my family back in India but they don’t fully get as they haven’t used Apple Pay, but I’ve used both.

It’s just so seamless with Apple Pay to double click the side button on the iPhone or Apple Watch and tap, rather than using a dedicated UPI app, the camera to scan a QR code, tapping pay, using a pin etc.

Plus, this will help with Apple Pay on the web. I live in the U.S. but every time I need to pay for something in India, I have to either get rerouted to some secure gateway page for my card, use an OTP or log in to Netbanking. All of which are slower than using Apple Pay with FaceID/TouchID.

it only took 12 years 🤣🤣
India is a huge market , can't believe Apple ignored them for so long

Apple didn’t ignore the India market, it actively tried to get refurbished iPhones in to prime the price sensitive market, only to be rebuffed by Modi’s government - they wanted to promote the Made in India PLI incentive program to get jobs and factories. Apple then had to invest billions with assembly partners Foxconn, Wistron, and now Tata and many others to make iPhones in India, now making 25% of all iPhones in India and growing.

Similarly, Apple Pay hasn’t been permitted by the government while they were building and promoting their own relatively complicated national digital payment system. It’s taken this long to get banks, credit card issuers, and cross border acceptance in and out of the country for it to become available, mirroring the work it took to get Apple Pay first up and running in the US and Europe.

Also, 12 years ago, the India market for iPhones and Apple Pay would have been vanishingly small due to relative price sensitivity and lack of a large, robust, and growing middle and upper class population. Since that time, many changes have happened to Indian infrastructure, wealth, and growth of the middle class and upper middle class where Apple markets and sells to. Now that market is a good sized part of the entire smartphone market and previous generations of iPhones are either still in use or passed down to others (family, friends, or resold), making the India install base large and wealthy enough to make Apple Pay a useful and in demand service to users, and attractive to banks to back it.

This is Apple waiting for the market and install base to catch up to a very useful service.

They didn’t. They faced major hurdles in bringing Apple Pay to India because of RBI regulations in India, most especially the one rule requiring a four digit PIN which is much less secure than biometrics.

Exactly, QR scanning, PIN numbers, possible privacy, data gathering, and access to your bank or debit accounts make the Indian and Walmart Pay apps similar in execution, and friction. Apple Pay has none of these concerns or risks because of how it was designed, it’s tokenization, and the emphasis on fraud protection and privacy.

RBI regulations proved relatively onerous till now. India recognizes the popularity and importance of Apple and iPhones in the Indian market and upward mobility of India’s middle class.

Could be but not my problem ;-) I pay a yearly fee and I expect to have the same services that every AmEx market have since years.

That’s fine for YOU, you pay AMEX directly, but it’s the merchants who need to accept AMEX payments and AMEX charges and fees make that much more expensive. Similarly, Apple Pay is not going to incorporate AMEX if the merchants and banks aren’t going to support it or accept it.

You can expect all you want with AMEX, but if they don’t find acceptance in certain markets, be prepared to have a backup VISA or Mastercard in your Apple Wallet, which I’m sure you have already.

it only took 12 years 🤣🤣
India is a huge market , can't believe Apple ignored them for so long

They didn’t. They faced major hurdles in bringing Apple Pay to India because of RBI regulations in India, most especially the one rule requiring a four digit PIN which is much less secure than biometrics.

It would enable tap to pay on phone and watch for the linked credit card. That’s a major plus.