Hyderabad, Feb. 27 -- It's been over 10 years since Apple Pay launched in the US in 2014, and has now expanded to 89 countries. India was not one of them. That is about to change soon and is likely to rattle UPI giants like Google Pay and Paytm.

According to aBloombergreport, Apple is in advanced talks with HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank, as well as card networks Visa and Mastercard, targeting a mid-2026 launch.

Why didn't Apple Pay come to India sooner?

As far back as 2017, Apple's services chief Eddy Cue had said publicly, "We absolutely want to bring Apple Pay to the market [in India]." What stopped it was regulation. India's payments system required SMS-based one-time passwords (OTP) for authentication.

This mechanism didn't ...