US-based technology giant Apple is planning to tap digital payments business in India, and may launch its in-house Apple Pay service in the near future.
With this move, the iPhone maker plans to expand its footprint in the country, Eddy Cue, Apple senior vice-president told Mint in an exclusive interview.
"Our head of Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, is here with me. And Apple Pay is something that we definitely want in India. The challenge with payment mechanisms is that there isn't really a lot of global scale. You deal with individual markets at a time... but India is one of those markets where we hope to bring Apple Pay to," Cue told the business daily. However, the Apple veteran has not given any specific date about the launch.
Rather than building a new payments solution from scratch, Cue hinted that to launch Apple Pay in India, it will look for local players to partner and integrate its payment service.
"You have some great payment mechanisms today and we will leverage all of that in doing this. That's one of the advantages that we have with Apple Pay—Apple Pay isn't trying to come up with a brand new payment vehicle, so the fact that people like Paytm are doing well here is great. The fact that credit cards are doing well here is great. We just need to integrate with the popular ones and make the service available," the business daily quoted the VP as saying.
In February this year, the government of Karnataka had announced Apple's proposal to start manufacturing operations in Bengaluru. Following this, the company has already started initial production of its iPhone SE model in Bengaluru, Mint reported.
"At the Apple level, India is an incredible opportunity... because what we're seeing is huge advancements in digitization, bypassing older technologies to newer technologies and we think that we have a really great product that can help move things even faster. And that's the reason I'm here, that's the reason (CEO) Tim (Cook) came here before. That's the reason why Tim will be back and I will be back. We view this as a very long-term opportunity but with very short-term gains that we can have here," added Cue.
