Paid with Apple Pay in India for the first time, and this is how it should be

So Apple Pay finally came to India on 30 September, twelve years after it launched in the US, and obviously I’d been waiting so long to try it out.

Right now it only works with Axis Bank’s Visa and Mastercard credit cards, and luckily my Flipkart Axis card is one of them.

The first time I paid with my watch, I just double-clicked the side button, held my wrist near the machine, and that was it. No phone, no internet, nothing. Honestly, after watching the rest of the world do this for 12 years, it was so cool to finally do it here. 😭

The iPhone is the same. The phone just becomes your card. This is how it should have always been.

It hasn’t been perfect though. There was one POS machine in a pretty well-known mall where it kept failing. My phone showed the tick like the payment had gone through, but the machine still said it failed. Tried a few times, same thing every time. Not sure if it was the machine or something else.

The only thing missing now is transit. In countries like Singapore and the US, you tap your phone or watch at the metro gate and walk through, and with Express Mode it doesn’t even ask for Face ID. We already tap NCMC cards at metro gates here, and at Global Fintech Fest last month NPCI Announced UPI Tap & Pay and a way to keep a RuPay transit card on your phone. But that transit part is Android only for now, and Apple Pay here doesn’t support RuPay at all.

So I’m not holding my breath… but if Apple Pay ever works at our metro gates, that’s when it’ll feel complete.

Has anyone else tried it yet? What are your thoughts about Apple Pay in India?