Apple No Longer Accepting Debit/Credit Card For App Purchases: Only These Payment Modes Allowed

Apple users in India will no longer be able to pay for subscriptions and app purchases by debit or credit card.

Which Payments Are Affected

This applies to all payments made to buy apps from the App Store, get Apple subscriptions such as iCloud+ and Apple Music, or purchase any media content from Apple.

This change is a result of RBI’s new auto-debit rules  which prevents companies from automatically deducting payments every payment cycle.

The company currently only supports netbanking, UPI, and Apple ID balance as the three options to receive payments.

No More Card Payments

It says on its support page that regulatory requirements in India apply to the processing of recurring transactions.

If one has an Indian debit or credit card and a subscription, these changes will impact those transactions.

The regulatory requirements here refers to the new auto-debit rules by the RBI that restricts Apple from receiving recurring payments from users in India via credit and debit cards.

It will have to do so through UPI and net banking — the two features that it had introduced for its users in the country last year.

What The Rules Entail

RBI’s rules require merchants like Apple to set up an e-mandate for customer cards.

Customers will have to use two-factor authentication and set up a fresh e-mandate for recurring payments.

They will also have to give their consent each time they need to pay a subsequent payment of above Rs. 5,000.

Systems processing with the given requirements are yet to be updated to a large extent, making it difficult for Apple to continue supporting card payments.

Google Follows Suit

Apple is not the only major company to change its payments mechanism.

Google did the same and a large number of its users are facing difficulties in making recurring payments and purchases via their cards on Google Play and YouTube.

The company is also not able to process Google Workspace transactions for many users due to the restrictions.

UPI AutoPay

Netflix last year introduced UPI AutoPay support for recurring payments on its platform in order to avoid issues due to the auto-debit rules.

The UPI AutoPay feature was introduced by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2020 to enable auto-debit of recurring payments. 

This is one of the main reasons companies including Apple and Netflix are favoring the local interface over traditional cards.