Nearly twelve years after Apple Pay was first announced, the feature is now available in India, one of the few major markets where it hadn’t yet been made available. Here are the details.
Apple Pay finally expands to India
Before today, TechCrunch reported that Apple Pay will launch in India “later Tuesday with Axis Bank as the initial banking partner.”
Now, as noted by Aaron Perris on X, Apple has started enabling Apple Pay support in India on its servers, suggesting the rollout is officially underway.
According to an Apple Support article, there are currently 100 countries and regions that support Apple Pay. India, however, has yet to make the list, which Apple will likely update as soon as possible.
India has quickly become one of the most strategically important countries for Apple, both in terms of manufacturing and consumer growth.
In addition to expanding its retail presence and repeatedly highlighting the country’s strong growth during quarterly earnings calls, Apple and its suppliers have moved more iPhone production to India as part of a broader effort to diversify production beyond China.
This expansion was not without controversy. Apple is currently fighting an antitrust case brought by the Competition Commission of India over its App Store practices, and the company has also refused to comply with a government order requiring smartphone makers to pre-install a state-run app on new devices.
Apple manufacturing partner Tata Electronics also recently came under fire after an Indian pollution regulator said wastewater from one of its iPhone component factories contaminated nearby groundwater and farmland.
Tata was also recently targeted in a cyberattack that allegedly exposed confidential files of several companies, including Apple.
That said, the launch of Apple Pay in India marks another step in the company’s broader expansion in the country and comes at a potentially useful time for its services business.
During the latest fiscal quarter, Apple reported its first sequential decline in services revenue since the fiscal fourth quarter of 2022. Of course, India is unlikely to move that needle on its own, but with iPhone sales hitting record highs in the country, Apple Pay gives the company another way to continue to build on this momentum.
It’s worth checking out on Amazon
FTC: We use automatic affiliate links that generate income. Moreover.
