India, Oct. 1 -- Opening thoughts. It took a while to get here, but Apple Pay is now in India. The launch partners are Axis Bank as well as card networks Mastercard and Visa. Jennifer Bailey, Apple's vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet tells HT that the right pieces must be in place for Apple Pay to launch in any market globally, including the regulatory framework, payments infrastructure and partners who can deliver the experience for customers.

"A particularly important development was the RBI's move to support biometric authentication for card payments, which enables customers to authenticate Apple Pay transactions using Face ID or Touch ID. At the same time, we now have a tremendous partner in Axis Bank, alongside Visa and M...