Apple Pay finally launches in India after years on the sidelines
- ID
- 29950
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 30 Sep 2026, 12:08 PM
- Fetched
- 30 Sep 2026, 12:35 PM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/29/apple-pay-set-to-launch-in-india-with-axis-bank-today-sources-say/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 4.5
- Created
- 30 Sep 2026, 12:35 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developerssaas_founders
What happened
Apple Pay launched in India on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, with Axis Bank as its first and only banking partner, supporting eligible Axis Bank Visa and Mastercard cards — but not the homegrown RuPay network — and only at merchants and terminals enabled for the service. Apple is asking roughly 20 basis points per transaction, which sources describe as a significant bite out of the 40–50 basis points of margin in the payments layer; HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and SBI Card are not supporting Apple Pay at launch while commercial terms are still being negotiated. Unlike India's UPI system, Apple Pay is card-based, so each issuer and infrastructure provider has to integrate separately, which the report says makes a broad rollout harder.
Why it matters
For anyone building payments or checkout in Malaysia, the number that matters here is Apple's ~20 bps ask against a 40–50 bps payments-layer margin — roughly half the spread — which is the same commercial question local acquirers and issuers would face if Apple Pay arrives in a market where DuitNow QR already handles instant bank-to-bank transfers at near-zero cost to the merchant. If you're choosing which rails to support in a Malaysian product roadmap, treat card-wallet support as a margin decision, not a checkbox, and note that India's launch excludes RuPay and three of its largest issuers — a domestic-network exclusion pattern worth watching locally.
Discussion angle
If Apple Pay came to Malaysia at ~20 bps, would that be survivable for local merchants already running DuitNow QR — and does a card-based wallet with no domestic-network support (as with RuPay in India) make sense here at all?