Apple has delayed plans to launch Apple Pay in India after landing in a regulatory grey zone despite holding discussions with a few leading banks and the National Payments Corporation of India, which manages the United Playments Interface-based (UPI) platform, reports The Economic Times, quoting unnamed “people with knowledge of the matter.”
UPI is an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of Indiafacilitating inter-bank transactions. The interface is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India and works by instantly transferring funds between two bank accounts on a mobile platform.
Apple’s issue seems to be with the Reserve Bank of India’s recent data localization rule, as well as the fact that at the tech giant also ran into technical and design hurdles related to the flow of payments on UPI.
RBI’s data localization rule that requires companies to store all their payments data only within India has made uncertain the plans of other multinational companies as well, including Mastercard, Visa, Amazon, WhatsApp, and PayPal, adds The Economic Times.
