Apple Restores Card Payments in India After Four-Year RBI Compliance Effort

Apple began accepting Visa and Mastercard for App Store purchases and subscriptions in India as of July 2026, ending a May 2022 suspension triggered by the Reserve Bank of India's recurring-payment framework. The framework mandated tokenization, stronger authentication, and a ban on merchant-side card storage. Apple has completed the necessary backend changes and plans RuPay support next. The move removes friction for premium subscribers who prefer cards over UPI Autopay, India's dominant recurring-payment rail.