NEW DELHI, India—Apple has halted plans to bring digital payments to India, thanks in part to regulatory hurdles and challenges in creating a service that works with the UPI platform in the country.
According to The Economic Times, which cited two people with knowledge of the matter, Apple halted development of the digital payment service even though it had held talks with some of the leading banks in India as well as the National Payments Corporation of India, which manages the UPI platform. The report noted Apple’s biggest concern is a new data location rule put in place by the Reserve Bank of India. It is requiring companies to store payments locally within the country.
The Economic Times reported that Apple was interested in including fingerprints as a way of authentication for UPI payments, but the National Payments Corporation of India didn’t provide its approval for the idea.