Apple isn’t having a happy time of it in India at present, with falling sales and market share, a threatened ban on iPhones, increased import taxes, and legal requirements preventing it opening Apple Stores there.
Things don’t appear to be getting any better, with the latest report saying that a new law has forced the company to put its planned Apple Pay rollout on hold …
It’s almost a year since Eddy Cue promised that Apple Pay would be coming to India. He said then that the company didn’t want to give a launch date until it was 100% certain, and that’s now looking like a very wise decision.
Economic Times cites two sources saying that Apple has now had to put this plan on hold.
But there’s reportedly a more fundamental problem too. Apple Pay is authenticated by either Touch ID or Face ID, and the NCPI won’t accept that.
The main worry for Apple is the Reserve Bank of India’s recent data localisation rule […] that requires companies to store all their payments data only within India.
After China, India is now the world’s second-largest smartphone market – having overtaken the US last year, making it vital to Apple’s future growth that it can operate successfully there.
