Apple Pay likely to debut in India soon
HYDERABAD: Apple Inc. is eyeing a piece of India’s rapidly booming digital payments business and may launch its Apple Pay service in the near future, even as the iPhone maker looks to boost its presence in India.
In an interview at Apple’s Hyderabad development centre, Apple senior vice-president Eddy Cue said the firm wants to launch Apple Pay in India in the near future without giving a specific date.
“Our head of Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, is here with me. And Apple Pay is something that we definitely want in India. The challenge with payment mechanisms is that there isn’t really a lot of global scale. You deal with individual markets at a time..but India is one of those markets where we hope to bring Apple Pay to,” said Cue, who heads the company’s internet software and services business.
To launch Apple Pay in India, the company will look to partner and integrate its payments service with established players in the country like Paytm, rather than build a new payments solution from scratch, Cue said.
“You have some great payment mechanisms today and we will leverage all of that in doing this. That’s one of the advantages that we have with Apple Pay — Apple Pay isn’t trying to come up with a brand new payment vehicle, so the fact that people like Paytm are doing well here is great. The fact that credit cards are doing well here is great. We just need to integrate with the popular ones and make the service available,” said Cue, who reports directly to Apple chief executive Tim Cook.
Last year, Apple also launched a so-called ‘App Accelerator’ in Bengaluru, as part of a push to tap the country’s developer ecosystem.