Apple Will No Longer Accept Indian Debit, Credit Cards For App Purchases: Here's Why

Apple Inc AAPL will no longer be accepting Indian debit and credit cards as a payment method for apps and subscriptions on the App Store.

What Happened: The company told its users via email that it won’t be accepting cards issued by Indian banks because of India’s central bank guidelines of the new auto-debit rules that came into force last year. However, the customer may add cards issued by banks of other nations for payments.

See Also: Apple, Microsoft To Be Hit As China Bans Foreign Computers, OS In Government Offices

“Due to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulations, Apple Search Ads will soon no longer accept payments from credit cards issued by banks in India,” it said.

The new central bank guidelines require customers’ banks to send a pre-debit notification 24 hours before the automatic payment; it also made OTPs mandatory for recurring payments of above INR 5000. 

It's not just Apple, other subscription-based businesses such as Amazon.Com Inc AMZN, Netflix Inc NFLX, and Alphabet Inc’s GOOGL GOOG Google were also affected after the central bank introduced the new rules in October.

Apple further added that “starting June 1, all campaigns using a credit card issued from a bank in India will be placed on hold. To avoid a lapse in serving ads to your customers, you can use a credit card issued by a bank outside of India. You can update your payment method by going to the billing tab in your account settings.”

Meanwhile, in April, Apple also introduced various new payment methods, including UPI and net banking, for its users in India.

Price Action: According to Benzinga Pro, shares of Apple traded 0.36% lower at $156.21 in the premarket trading on Friday.