Apple Pay is now live in India for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch users. The launch was officially announced on 30th September. Currently, only users with an Axis Bank credit card (VISA and Mastercard) can use Apple Pay.
Apple Pay uses NFC(Near Field Communication) to facilitate payments at the point of sale without the requirement of a PIN or OTP. Your iPhone(XR or newer models) needs to run iOS 18 or a more recent build for Apple Pay to work.
Apple Watch users must upgrade their wearable to watchOS 11 or a newer version to make contactless payments via Apple Pay. Only Watch Series 6 and later models are supported. Indian macOS users currently cannot use Apple Pay as it is not yet supported.
How to Add Your Card to Apple Pay?
There are two ways to do this. Access the Axis Bank mobile app to directly add the card to Apple Wallet for your respective Apple account.
Otherwise, you can add your Axis Bank credit card manually to the Apple Wallet app.
- Open Apple Wallet on your iPhone/iPad.
- Tap the + button
- Go to Debit or Credit Card to add the card details
How does Apple Pay work at checkout?
At any point of sale, after making a purchase, let the cashier enter the amount payable. All you have to do is double-click the side button of the iPhone (home button if the iPhone has one), followed by quick authentication based on Face ID, Touch ID, or Passcode.
Hold your Apple Device near the contactless reader of the POS machine to instantly process the payment. This effectively nullifies the need to manually fill in the card details every time you want to make a purchase and pay using a credit card.
Where can you use Apple Pay?
Several prominent merchants and payment processors support Apple Pay for smooth contactless payment. Some of them are
- Apple Stores across India
- Reliance Brands
- Blinkit
- Croma
- Tata 1mg
- Zomato
- Ixigo
Payment processors such as BillDesk, Razorpay, PineLabs, PayU, and Juspay etc. support Apple Pay, with more processors set to be included in the future. You can find the complete list of merchants and payment processors in the Apple Pay India launch official press release.
How Safe is Apple Pay?
It is worth understanding how Apple Pay works. Your card details are not stored on Apple’s servers. Even the merchants have no access to the data on the card. The Apple device you use is assigned an encrypted Device Account Number stored in the Secure Element chip that holds the payment data.
The idea is to protect the card details and focus on the payment processing without much fuss. Apple Pay is supported in more than 90 countries, with India being the latest addition to the list.
Apple timed it right to introduce its payment method
India has a huge population that actively prefers digital payments for daily financial transactions. With a significantly growing number of iPhone users, Apple has figured out the game and has timed it right to introduce Apple Pay in the country.
At the same time, in the Indian digital payments segment, UPI continues to be one of the most sought-after payment methods by a majority of people, which is widely supported across Android and iOS, compared to Apple Pay, which is exclusive to the Apple ecosystem and credit card users.
