There are press reports that the much anticipated Apple pay launch expected in India won’t be happening as soon as expected. It is understood that the delays are related to security and regulatory issues in the increasingly protectionist country that wants information held in-country on local servers if it’s related to private user data. But it seems like Apple is delayed but not deterred.
If you think about it in U.S. terms, we don’t care if it’s Mastercard, Visa 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. It is great that all of these payment mechanisms are 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 India.
– Eddy Cue, Senior Vice President, Internet Software and Services, Apple Pay
And despite that evident enthusiasm, it does now look like (if reports are to be believed) that the Apple Pay India launch will be delayed and there is no information on when it might be scheduled.
As we have written at length recently, and also explored in a video called Are you profiting from Indian ecommerce? India is hot property right now.
The big ecommerce, and payments firms like Apple, all want their share of the spoils. Walmart, Amazon, Flipkart Google, Apple, Etsy and eBay are all slogging it out in the the sub-continent but we are not sure if merchants are getting any of the action.
The Indian ecommerce environment is very much honed and skewed to ensuring that local merchants are the ones making the most money there. And they want to protect local consumers too. Neither of which is necessarily a bad thing. But Western merchants are finding it vey tricky to break through. Are you one of them?
