Apple Pay has launched in India, arriving more than a decade after the payment service first went live elsewhere. The move highlights how lengthy regional rollouts can be for Apple’s core services, with availability still varying widely across global markets in 2026.
Apple Pay originally debuted in 2014, yet it has only now become active in India, one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing markets. Apple had signalled its intentions as far back as 2017, when the company indicated it was working to bring the service to the country. The expansion makes commercial sense given the scale of the Indian market, though the extended timeline underlines how complex such launches can be.
Apple Music expands to four more countries
Alongside the payments news, Apple Music has rolled out to four additional territories: Albania, Brunei, Burkina Faso and Pakistan. The update became available midweek, extending the streaming service to markets that had previously gone without official support.
Apple Music was first unveiled in June 2015, launching in more than 100 countries at the time. That means these four nations have waited over 11 years to gain access. No formal explanation has been offered for the delay, nor for why these particular countries were left out for so long.
Much of the hold-up in launching music services typically relates to licensing negotiations with record labels. Yet both Apple and the labels have a financial incentive to reach agreements swiftly, which makes the lengthy delay harder to account for. It is also possible that the countries simply fell lower on Apple’s list of priorities over the years.
Service availability differs by region
Access to Apple’s services remains uneven depending on location. In the United Kingdom, almost all of Apple’s offerings are available, but there are notable gaps. Apple Pay works in the UK, yet features such as Apple Card remain restricted to the United States for the time being.
Other differences persist too. Puzzles within News+ are offered to US users but not to those in the UK, despite the apparent simplicity of adding brainteasers to Apple News compared with the regulatory and financial hurdles involved in launching a payment card. Switching regions for testing purposes can also leave unusable features, such as an Apple Cash card, displayed permanently in the Wallet app.
One advantage for UK users is that they typically receive service and software updates relatively quickly, and are not subject to the delays affecting certain upcoming features within the European Union. The latest expansions nevertheless demonstrate how availability can lag by years, with the newly added Apple Music territories having waited more than a decade for inclusion.
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Image: appleinsider.com
