Apple launched Apple Pay in India through a single bank, Axis Bank, so at first it works with just Axis Visa and Mastercard credit cards, in stores and online at merchants including Zomato, Blinkit, Croma, and Reliance brands. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card are still negotiating terms, with Apple asking for about 20 basis points per transaction out of the roughly 40 to 50 that the payments layer earns, according to TechCrunch. Apple Pay also doesn’t support RuPay cards or UPI, the state-backed bank-transfer system that Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm run on, which leaves it competing for the much smaller share of Indian payments that still go through cards.
