Best Payment Gateways

Here is the thing nobody puts on a pricing page. UPI carries zero merchant discount rate by government policy. The gateway still charges you its full percentage on every UPI payment. On a business where most customers pay by UPI, you are paying a card-style rate on a free rail.

What do Indian payment gateways actually charge?

Every figure above comes from the provider’s own pricing page, read on 6 September 2026. We could not find a public rate card for PayU, so we have not quoted one. Treat any PayU number you see elsewhere as unverified.

Why does UPI cost you money when UPI is free?

Merchant discount rate on person-to-merchant UPI is zero under government policy. So is RuPay debit. Razorpay says so on its own pricing page, and then charges 2% anyway. It calls that a platform fee.

The reasoning is defensible. You are buying the dashboard, the reconciliation, the settlement engine and the fraud tooling. You are not buying interchange, because there is none.

The consequence is not defensible for every merchant. If 70% of your volume is UPI, a flat 2% means you pay roughly ₹1,40,000 on a ₹1,00,00,000 UPI year for a rail that costs the network nothing. This is the number to negotiate. Razorpay publishes a lower 0.99% rate on UPI QR collections and offers custom pricing above ₹5,00,000 a month. Ask for the UPI line to be split out.

What the headline percentage leaves out

GST at 18% sits on top of the fee. A 2% rate is 2.36% all in. Registered businesses can claim it as input credit, so the real cost is the base rate. Unregistered ones cannot, and should compare on the gross figure.

Settlement timing is the second omission. Cashfree settles on a standard T+2 working day cycle and sells faster settlement as a separate product. Faster money is working capital, and it has a price. Read that price before you switch for a five basis point saving.

Third is success rate. A gateway that fails 4% of transactions at checkout costs far more than a 0.05% pricing difference. Nobody publishes this. Run both in parallel for a month and measure it yourself.

Fourth is chargebacks and disputes. Card chargebacks are charged per case and can be disputed. Check the fee and the evidence window in your agreement, not on the website.

Which gateway should you actually pick?

If you are UPI-heavy and small, take the cheapest published rate and revisit at volume. Cashfree at 1.95% is that rate today.

If you are card-heavy, or you sell abroad, compare the international line rather than the domestic one. Razorpay publishes up to 3% for international cards. That spread is where a cross-border business loses money.

If you are above roughly ₹5,00,000 a month, stop comparing rate cards. Every provider negotiates at that point, and the negotiation is worth more than the choice. Take two written quotes and split the UPI, card and net banking lines apart.

If you also take payments in person, price the terminal separately. Our page on POS machines covers that. And keep settlements landing in a proper business current account, not a personal one.