Apple Pay opens in India on Axis Bank Visa and Mastercard credit cards

Apple Pay is now live in India, almost twelve years after Apple first switched the service on in the United States. The launch, confirmed by Apple on 30 September 2026 and first reported by TechCrunch a day earlier, starts with one bank and two card networks. Customers with Axis Bank Visa and Mastercard credit cards can add those cards to an iPhone, an iPad or an Apple Watch and pay in stores, in apps and on the web. Mac support is listed as coming soon. RuPay, the domestic network that carries a large share of Indian card spending, is not in the first release.

Axis is the country's third-largest private bank. Its managing director, Amitabh Chaudhry, said the bank wanted payment experiences that matched a change in how customers expect to pay. Apple's own line is plainer: a tap in a shop without a separate app, a PIN or a one-time password, and an online checkout that does not ask for the card number again. Rewards on the underlying card continue. Apple said the service would be accepted at millions of merchant locations, and named Apple Store shops, Blinkit, Chaayos, Comet, Croma, Interflora, Ixigo, Le15 Patisserie, Reliance brands, Tata 1mg and Zomato. Acceptance still depends on a terminal that has been enabled for the service, not on every card machine in the country.

The limit is the story, more than the logo. India already has a dominant public payment rail. The Unified Payments Interface moves retail money by virtual address, through PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm, at a cost and a speed that card networks have not matched. Apple Pay does not plug into UPI in this launch. It plugs into two international card schemes, on credit cards from one bank. That is a wallet for people who already hold an Axis Visa or Mastercard and an Apple device, not a replacement for the rail most Indians use at a kirana counter.

Apple's support page now lists 101 countries and regions with Apple Pay, India among them. The country has been an awkward absence. Apple builds a growing share of iPhones there, has opened stores in Mumbai and Delhi, and talks about Indian revenue on earnings calls. Payments sat outside that expansion because of data-localisation rules, the Reserve Bank's tokenisation regime, and the commercial question of who owns the customer relationship when UPI already does. The Axis deal answers the last of those for a narrow set of cards. It does not answer UPI.

Tokenisation is the mechanical change for the cardholder. The phone stores a device-specific number, not the 16-digit card number. A shop sees a token and a dynamic code. Apple says the purchase does not require a PIN or an OTP at the terminal. Indian rules have spent the last several years pushing one-time passwords on card-not-present payments after a run of fraud. A tap that skips both PIN and OTP will be watched by the bank and by the regulator for chargeback rates. Axis, not Apple, carries the credit risk on the card.

Competitors are already on the same phones. Samsung Pay and bank apps have offered tap-to-pay on Android for years. Google has pushed tokenised cards through its own wallet. None of them dislodged UPI. Apple's advantage, if it has one, is the share of high-spend cardholders who use iPhones, and the merchants who already take contactless Visa and Mastercard. Croma, Reliance and Zomato are in that group. A neighbourhood shop that takes only UPI is not.

The next names to watch are the banks Apple did not launch with. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and SBI Card were asked about the timing before the Axis release and did not comment, TechCrunch reported. A second issuer would tell the market whether this is a single-bank trial or the start of a card-wallet business. A RuPay add would tell it whether Apple intends to sit on the domestic network as well as the international ones. Neither has been announced.

Until then the practical fact is small enough to state cleanly. From the end of September, an Axis Visa or Mastercard credit card can live in Apple Pay on an iPhone, iPad or Watch in India, and can be tapped at enabled terminals and at the merchants Apple listed. The rest of the country's payments still run on a rail this launch does not touch.