Apple Pay likely to enter India market this year, launch seen by end-2026

Apple Pay, the digital payment service of the Cupertino-headquartered tech giant, is preparing to launch in India this year, according to sources. The service, that’s already available across 89 markets in the world, is expected to make its India foray towards the end of 2026. 

The Tim Cook-led company, which has been trying to enter the India market for sometime, still needs a series of regulatory approvals. In India, Apple Pay is likely to offer the ‘tap to pay’ feature, like in 50 other markets. 

An email sent to Apple did not elicit a response till press time. 

Apple has to negotiate commercials with major card issuers in terms of the fee they need to pay the tech giant for the payment gateway. 

Apple Pay is a service provided by Apple Payments Services, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. 

“Apple will work with banks, regulators and card networks to bring the proposition to India in the calendar year 2026,’’ according to another source. 

With this service, customers can save their credit and debit cards to the Apple Wallet. Once a card is saved and set as default, they can simply tap their device on PoS (point of sale) terminals to make contactless payments via NFC (near field communication). 

Apple Pay is considered an easy, secure, and private way to pay using iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple Vision Pro. Unlike other digital payment service such as Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm and others, Apple Pay is only meant for Apple devices.

Currently, in India, credit cards and debit cards cannot be loaded on Apple Wallet. 

“The idea is that you can save a card on your device and enable contactless payments through it at merchant outlets. Payment Aggregators (PAs) would want to enable it since there are already newer technologies in place such as device tokenisation for smoother payments,” a payments company executive said.

 

Apple Pay’s India entry will coincide with the growth in digital payments including contactless credit and debit cards, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), digital wallets such as prepaid payments instruments (PPIs), among others. 

Given that UPI is ubiquitous in digital payments in India, the US-based tech giant could also eye entering this space in future. 

Apple Pay’s India foray comes at a time when Apple's market share in the country has grown significantly. The company recorded its highest quarterly shipments in India in the third quarter of 2025, reaching 5 million units and securing the fourth position in the market for the first time,  according to International Data Corporation (IDC) data. 

“It is unlikely Apple Pay will apply for a TPAP (third party application provider) approval since the authorisation involves a steady path of regulatory authorisations and deals with a completely different payments system,” a source said. 

In 2025, fintechs Cashfree Payments and Razorpay integrated with Apple Pay as a payment method to support international payments for Indian merchants.