India may finally get Apple Pay by mid-2026
A new report backs up recent claims that India is shortly to get Apple Pay after years of complex negotiations.Apple Pay may finally come to IndiaIn January 2026, it was rumored that Apple was in talks to get Apple Pay in India. Now Bloomberg is reporting which banks Apple is in discussions with, and when it may launch.Apple is said to be in talks with three of the largest banks operating in the country: Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
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India may finally get Apple Pay by mid-2026
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William Gallagher
Thu Feb 26 2026, 07:00 AM EST
2 minute read
Apple Pay may finally come to India
A new report backs up recent claims that India is shortly to get Apple Pay after years of complex negotiations.
In January 2026, it was rumored that Apple was in talks to get Apple Pay in India. Now Bloomberg is reporting which banks Apple is in discussions with, and when it may launch.
Apple is said to be in talks with three of the largest banks operating in the country:
- ICICI Bank
- HDFC Bank
- Axis Bank
Citing unspecified sources said to be familiar with the discussions, the report says that Apple is aiming to launch Apple Pay by mid-2026.
What's taking so long
The January rumor said that Apple was also negotiating with both card issuers such as Visa and Mastercard, and the local government. It's the latter that is the reason Apple Pay is still not in India despite launching in the US in 2014.
Apple Pay steadily rolled out to most countries after that, and there were often rumors of India getting it. But India's financial systems are complex, and enough so that since 2022, Apple has not accepted credit or debit cards in the country.
For India, the absolute dominant payment system is the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and companies have to apply to support it. App Store and Apple Music users in India can reportedly use UPI, but so far Apple has not applied for it to support Apple Pay.
That has previously been said to be in part because the process of applying and of integrating UPI into a service is particularly complex.
Part of that appears to be down to how biometric authentication at least seemed to legally require the use of India's Aadhaar biometric ID system, rather than on-device Touch ID or Face ID. Reportedly, this meant on-device systems could not be used, although both Google Pay and Samsung Wallet have been supported in India for some years.
What the new report at least suggests, though, is that Apple Pay will be of more use in India than previously thought. When it appeared that Apple was negotiating with card issuers, it seemed likely that Apple Pay would only be usable with those.
Now if it's correct that major Indian banks are discussing supporting it, Apple Pay may become an option for all users of those establishments.
That's clearly Apple's aim, but it's been the aim since at least 2017. "We absolutely want to bring Apple Pay to the market [in India]," Apple's Eddy Cue said then.
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[Original source](https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/02/26/india-may-finally-get-apple-pay-by-mid-2026?utm_source=rss)