Apple adopts UPI for payments and subscriptions for India market, will no longer use credit and debit cards

In a recent communication with Apple product users, the company has asked them to shift to UPI or Net Banking for payments. In the mail, Apple mentioned that the step has been in the light of Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) regulations under which the companies cannot store credit or debit card details for purchases or subscriptions.

The email to the customers read, “In light of upcoming Reserve Bank of India regulations, starting June 1, credit and debit cards can no longer be used for purchases or subscriptions on the App Store or other Apple services. Apple will no longer store card information on file — protecting your payment method is our top priority.”

Suggesting to shift to UPI or Net Banking, the letter further read, “To avoid interruptions to your subscriptions and other purchases, please do the following:

1. Add UPI or Net Banking as a payment method.

2. Add funds to your Apple ID balance.

Your subscriptions will continue as long as you have a sufficient balance. If you are an Apple Music, TV+, iCloud+ or third-party subscriber and we cannot renew your subscription, your subscription will automatically expire.”

The RBI regulations

The changes in the payment methods have been brought into the light by RBI regulations issued in 2020. The banking regulator had said that the e-commerce companies or subscription platforms would not be able to store the card information of the users. It asked the platforms to replace it with a card tokenization method or Card on File Tokenization (CoFT).

RBI had asked the platforms to replace each debit or credit card number with a randomized token number if the user wants to use it for recurring payments. The platforms had requested RBI to provide time to implement changes. The date was extended from January 1, 2022 to June 30, 2022.

It is noteworthy that platforms like PayTM have already implemented the change, and a few months back, it had started asking users to allow storing card information as per new guidelines. All the cards that were not allowed by the user were removed from the list available in the user’s payment information.