AI Weekly Malaysia

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: 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.