MUMBAI, Sept 18 (Reuters) – Apple is poised to launch Apple Pay in India \u2060next month with Axis Bank’s credit cards, three sources familiar with the \u200cmatter said, as it works to expand support among the country’s lenders.<\/p>\n
The launch, starting with a single major banking partner, would help the US company offer its payment service in the world’s most populous \u200bcountry, one of the few major economies where it \u2060is not available.<\/p>\n
Mumbai-based Axis Bank \u2060is the fourth-largest credit card issuer in India. <\/p>\n
Apple Pay has also been in discussions \u2060with \u200cAxis Bank’s larger private sector rivals HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank but they are yet to agree commercial terms, two of the sources said.<\/p>\n
All three \u2060sources spoke on condition of anonymity as the talks \u200bare private. Apple and \u200cHDFC did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. ICICI and \u2060Axis said no \u200bcomment when contacted by Reuters.<\/p>\n
Apple Pay allows iPhone users to make tap-and-pay purchases using tokenised card details stored in their devices, without opening a separate payments app.<\/p>\n
Apple plans to add \u2060lenders over time through direct, bank-by-bank deals, mirroring \u200bphased rollouts in other markets, said one of the three sources. <\/p>\n
Apple’s share of India’s smartphone market has doubled to 8% since 2022, according to Counterpoint Research, establishing it as \u2060one of its largest markets. <\/p>\n
Apple Pay will join a crowded digital payments market.<\/p>\n
Payments via the home-grown Unified Payments Interface, which allows transfers via QR codes, phone numbers and tap and pay, dominate the market, making up 84% of India’s digital payments volume.<\/p>\n
Last \u200byear, the Reserve Bank of India allowed biometric authentication \u2060for card payments, enabling Apple’s payment service to work with Indian bank cards using \u200bFace ID and Touch ID.<\/p>\n
Axis Bank, with 16.26 million \u200cactive credit cards in July, trails HDFC \u200bBank, SBI Cards and ICICI Bank in terms of issuance, according to RBI data.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Ashwin Manikandan and Gopika Gopakumar; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MUMBAI, Sept 18 (Reuters) – Apple is poised to launch Apple Pay in India \u2060next month with Axis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-774453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}