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Apple Pay has finally arrived in India, but it is entering a payments market that has little resemblance to the one Apple built the service around in the US and other major markets. Indians already have UPI, QR codes are everywhere, and digital payments are deeply embedded in everyday transactions. At the same time, Apple has been steadily building a much larger customer base in the country, particularly at the premium end of the smartphone market.
Apple does not disclose how many iPhones are currently in use in India. What is clear is that the installed base is growing. India had more than 740 million active smartphones in 2025, while Apple has said its own active installed base in the country reached a record high.
Apple shipped about 14 million iPhones in India during 2025, giving it about 9% of the country’s smartphone shipments. But Apple’s importance is much greater when measured by money rather than units. It was estimated that Apple accounted for 28% of India’s smartphone market by value in 2025.
Potential Apple Pay User Base
That is the customer base Apple is now trying to turn into an Apple Pay user base.
Apple Pay went live in India on September 30, initially with Axis Bank. Customers with eligible Axis Bank Visa and Mastercard credit cards can add those cards to Apple Wallet and use Apple Pay on supported Apple devices. RuPay cards are not supported at launch. Apple Pay can be used at physical stores as well as within participating apps and websites.
The initial card base is sizeable, but it needs some qualification. Axis Bank had 16.3 million credit cards outstanding in August 2026, according to RBI data cited by Reuters, compared with around 124 million credit cards across the country. That does not mean 16.3 million people can immediately use Apple Pay. The Axis figure includes cards across different networks, while Apple’s launch currently covers Visa and Mastercard credit cards.
But, Where Can People Use It?
The bigger question for Apple, however, is on the other side of the transaction: where can people actually use it?
A customer using Apple Pay in a shop does not need the merchant to own an iPhone. The transaction uses the phone’s NFC capability and a compatible contactless payment terminal. The terminal then processes the payment through the card network and the merchant’s acquiring bank.
India already has a very large network of such payment terminals. RBI data shows that there were 10.028 million POS terminals in the country in July 2026. But that figure covers the country’s entire POS infrastructure. It does not tell us how many terminals support contactless payments, and there is no publicly disclosed national figure for how many have specifically been enabled for Apple Pay.
That distinction matters because Apple is not building a new network of terminals for India. It is working with payment companies already operating in the country. Its launch partners include Cashfree, JusPay, Mswipe, Paytm, PayU, Pine Labs, Razorpay and Worldline.
Apple has also not given a clean number for its physical merchant footprint. Its launch announcement says Apple Pay will be accepted by “millions of merchants” across India, but elsewhere in the same announcement it describes eligible Axis cardholders being able to use the service at “thousands of in-store and online merchants.” Apple executive Jennifer Bailey also described the launch as involving thousands of merchants in an interview with Moneycontrol.
So while India has more than 10 million POS terminals, there is no reliable public figure yet for how many of them can actually accept an Apple Pay transaction.
That might sound like a minor technical detail, but it is important in India because the country’s dominant payment behaviour is very different from simply tapping a card at a terminal.
The UPI Question In A Country Used To QR Payments
UPI processed 24.51 billion transactions in August 2026, worth about ₹29.82 lakh crore, according to NPCI. Reuters reported that UPI had more than 550 million users and accounted for about 84% of India’s digital-payment volume during the month.
For a large part of the Indian population, therefore, the payment experience is a QR code rather than a contactless card terminal. Apple Pay does not try to replicate UPI. At least in its initial Indian form, it is essentially a way of putting an eligible bank card inside Apple’s Wallet and using it through contactless payments.
There is an interesting coincidence here. India itself is beginning to push NFC-based payments through UPI. NPCI introduced UPI Tap & Pay in September, allowing users to make payments by tapping compatible smartphones against NFC-enabled payment terminals.
That means the infrastructure Apple is entering could become relevant to two very different payment systems. An iPhone user can tap to make a card payment through Apple Pay, while another smartphone user could eventually tap to make a UPI payment.
The difference is that UPI already operates at enormous scale. Apple Pay is starting with one bank and two card networks, even as Apple’s hardware business in India has been expanding rapidly.
How Much Existing Infra Is Available For Apple Users
That makes the early Apple Pay story less about whether India has enough iPhones or enough POS machines. It is about how much of the country’s existing contactless infrastructure is actually available to Apple’s users.
For now, Apple has confirmed the participating banks, card networks, payment partners and a number of participating merchants. It has not published the number that would answer the most obvious question for an Indian customer: exactly how many physical POS terminals across the country are ready to accept Apple Pay.
And that is probably the number worth watching as Apple expands the service beyond its initial Axis Bank launch.
