Apple Pay launches in India, letting eligible Axis Bank Visa and Mastercard credit cardholders add their cards to Apple Wallet on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch (Dhruv Mohan/The Economic Times)

Apple Pay’s long-awaited launch in India gives eligible Axis Bank Visa and Mastercard credit cardholders a new, trusted mobile-payment option across iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, strengthening the competitive push toward contactless and wallet-based commerce. For CIOs and technology leaders, this is a signal that consumer payment expectations are continuing to shift toward seamless, secure, device-native experiences, and banks and enterprises will need to prioritize wallet compatibility, payment-tokenization readiness, fraud controls, and customer-support workflows tied to Apple’s ecosystem.