Senior Apple executive Eddy Cue has confirmed that the company is developing Apple Pay for India. It’s going to bring its mobile payments service to one of the most lucrative smartphone markets on the planet. It was only a matter of time before the company did that, given that some competing mobile payment services are already operating in India.
“We’re working on it, but no date to announce at this point,” Eddy Cue told Livemint, adding that “We like to announce a date that we know is a 100 percent.” What that means is that it’s unlikely we’ll get a confirmed release date out of Apple at any point in the immediate future.
Cue also mentioned that it’s difficult to scale up Apple Pay globally and that the company is going to do that by focusing on one market at a time. It takes time because Apple has to negotiate with local banks and card issuers, they’re not always willing to play ball.
India may be a significant smartphone market but Apple is by no means the leader there. However, Apple has recently been focusing on improving its retail presence in the country and there has also been talk of iPhone production in India.
It certainly operating with a long-term view on the Indian market and it makes perfect sense of its mobile payments service to be a part of those efforts as well.
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