India may be one of the hottest markets for Apple products it is certainly not in in its radar to prioritize the country of 1.2 billion people. And it’s happening for a very long.
It’s not only about making Apple Pay available in India, it’s also not being in the list of first countries where the products are being made available.
It is always the second list of countries with the Apple products are launched. But India has certainly progressed to make its way into the second list of countries.
However it is going to take a little while for services like Apple Pay to be made available in India.
What is Apple Pay
It’s a payment service by Apple where you can link your physical credit or debit card, and do contactless payments using the Apple devices.
Imagine you are in a store in India, at the checkout line, and you use your iPhone for making payments through your debit or credit card instead of taking out the physical wallet.
Reasons why Apple Pay is not available in India
UPI integration
Digital payments in India happen through the technology called UPI, where users’ bank account numbers are linked to the Wallet services.
The NPCI has made it mandatory to have a 4 or 6-digit pin to authorize the payments. And since Apple Pay doesn’t require any type of PIN or OTP and relies on biometrics such as fingerprint authorization for the payment.
So Apple Pay just won’t work as usual as it works in countries where it is supported right now.
Payment data can be stored outside of the country
Reserve bank of India made it mandatory to store payment data of Indians in the country itself for better security and safety.
Apple does not have the infrastructure available in India it will either have to tie up with an existing company set up in India or will have to spend time in money to do the same which might take a while.
Digital space is highly competitive in India
With more than a dozen digital payment services already available in India it’s quite a competition. Giants like Google, and PayTM, have already made their space in the market, so it is going to be a little tough for Apple to compete with the major players, and is going to take a while longer for it to be making sense in terms of ROI.