Apple Pay’s long-awaited India entry appears to be moving from speculation to groundwork. Apple has posted a Business Development Manager role for Wallet, Payments and Commerce in India. The Bengaluru-based role explicitly mentions Apple Pay and its India operations.

The person hired will handle strategic commercial negotiations and partnerships. The role covers integration of card issuers, acquirers and point-of-sale vendors. It also involves work with banks, payment networks, regulators and merchants.

The job description names areas central to India’s payments ecosystem, including NFC payments, UPI, device tokenisation and payment networks. This surprised some watchers, since early rumours had suggested Apple Pay might skip UPI support.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported that Apple Pay could launch in India by October. Reuters earlier reported that Apple was preparing a rollout initially with Axis Bank’s credit cards. Talks with HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank were also reported, though commercial terms were not finalised.