Apple Pay To Launch In India By October, UPI Support Unlikely At Start

Apple Pay, Apple’s digital payments service, is expected to launch in India by September-end or October, marking the company’s entry into the country’s growing digital payments and premium credit card market, as per a report by Business Standard.

The service is likely to initially support credit cards issued on international networks such as Visa and Mastercard.

However, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions are not expected to be available when Apple Pay launches in India, the report said.

Apple would need approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and would also have to tie up with a sponsor bank to route UPI transactions, it added.

Apple has also been in discussions with major credit card issuers in India over the fee it would receive on transactions made through its platform.

The fee would not be directly charged to customers or merchants, but would instead come from banks’ interchange earnings, Business Standard reported.

Apple has been seeking a 15-20 basis point share of the interchange fee on each credit card transaction, while some large banks have been negotiating for a 10-basis-point charge, the report said.

An interchange is the fee paid by a merchant’s bank to the card-issuing bank for processing a card transaction and forms part of the merchant discount rate (MDR).

Apple Pay is currently available in more than 90 markets globally.

Card Payments Can Grow

Apple Pay will allow users to store their card details in Apple Wallet and use compatible Apple devices to make contactless payments at point-of-sale (PoS) terminals through near-field communication (NFC), as per BS.

The service’s entry into India could also support growth in credit card transactions. Amrish Rau, chief executive officer of Pine Labs reportedly said during the company's earnings call that credit card transactions will be back in the field after Apple Pay's entry into India.

More and more payment transactions will go back to credit card as credit card plus UPI continues to grow in the market, he said.