Choosing a payment gateway for an Indian Shopify store

Merchants pick a gateway on transaction fee. It is usually the least important variable.

A 0.2% difference in fee is worth far less than a 2% difference in payment success rate, and success rates vary meaningfully between providers, methods and banks.

The landscape

Razorpay is the common default. Broad method coverage, good documentation, a developer experience that does not fight you. For most merchants starting out this is the sensible choice.

PayU is long-established with strong bank relationships. Pairs naturally with Breeze if you also want their checkout layer.

Juspay is a different category — an orchestration layer that routes across multiple gateways rather than being one itself. It earns its place at volume, where routing intelligently between providers recovers meaningful revenue. Below that scale it is complexity you do not need.

Shopify Payments, where available to you, has the advantage of being native: no third-party app, checkout that never leaves Shopify, reconciliation in one place.

What actually matters

Success rate, especially on UPI and net banking. This is where money is won and lost. Ask any provider for their rates on your specific methods, and treat vague answers as an answer.

UPI handling. UPI is the dominant method for a large share of Indian shoppers. Intent flows, app switching, timeout behaviour on mobile — these determine whether a customer completes or gives up. Test on a real phone, not a desktop browser.

Settlement cycle. T+2 versus T+7 is a working capital difference that matters more to a growing brand than the fee.

Refunds and disputes. How fast, how much manual work. Support-heavy categories feel this daily.

COD reconciliation, if you take COD. How the gateway or your logistics provider remits collected cash, and how easily that ties back to orders.

What to do before committing

Run a real transaction on every method you intend to offer — card, UPI, net banking, wallet — on a real mobile device. Then run a refund.

That hour tells you more than any comparison table. The gaps between providers show up in exactly these flows, and they are invisible until you try.

A note on stacking

You do not have to choose one thing forever. A common shape is a primary gateway for prepaid, plus a checkout layer handling COD intelligence, plus a logistics provider handling cash remittance.

Each addition is another integration, another contract and another reconciliation surface. Add them when a specific problem justifies it, not preemptively.

Verify current pricing and availability directly with each provider — this moves often enough that any published comparison, including this one, is stale by the time you read it.