Apple’s plan to introduce its Apple Pay services in India is set to heat up the race to dominate the nation’s booming mobile payments market, says Eddy Cue.
According to a new interview from the Economic Times, Apple’s senior vice president for internet software and services Eddy Cue has said that the company, which has been focusing on India as its next growth market, says Apple would be open to all payment mechanisms from MasterCard to Visa or whatever else might work in India.
“We want to launch Apple Pay here but we don’t care about the payment mechanism itself,” said Cue. “If you think about in US terms, we don’t care if it’s MasterCard, Visa or whatever or whatever bank you deal with.”
“If you are in China, we don’t care if it’s WeChat pay or Alipay or credit card,” Cue continues. “It is great that all of these payment mechanisms is coming out in India because it empowers people to be able to pay. What Apple Pay does is make that process easy, integrated and safe. We absolutely want to bring Apple pay to market here.”
Apple is the latest global brand after Samsung and Google to show its interest in India’s digital payment sector. With the emergence of localised platforms like BHIM which has been built over United Payment Interface (UPI), Apple doesn’t feel the need to apply for a payment license in the country.
India’s digital payments market is dominated by the mobile wallet services offered by Paytm, accounting for more than half of India’s mobile wallets user base.
That hasn’t choked the ambitions of global players such as Google and Amazon. Last month, Google launched an India-specific mobile payments service called Tez, predicting 650 million Indians will be online in the next two years.
