When running an online business, one of the biggest decisions you’ll face is how to accept payments from your customers. The right payment gateway not only ensures smooth transactions but also reduces cart drop-offs, builds customer trust, and helps you scale faster.
In India, businesses have access to a wide variety of payment gateways, some designed for domestic payments with UPI and local methods, and others optimized for international transactions with multi-currency support. Below, we’ll explore the leading options across both categories.
What are the most popular domestic payment gateways in India?
1. PhonePe Payment Gateway
PhonePe PG is a popular choice for merchants who want high-conversion payments with minimal drop-offs. It supports over 120 payment methods, including UPI, cards, and wallets. Features like instant onboarding, AutoPay for recurring payments, and smart retries help reduce failed transactions and recover lost revenue.
Merchants can use hosted pages, embedded forms, APIs, or SDKs to make payments, whether they have a website or sell through other digital channels. PhonePe PG helps businesses improve success rates, lower churn, and scale efficiently across India.
2. Razorpay
Razorpay is designed for businesses that need more than just basic payment acceptance. It supports UPI, cards, net banking, and wallets, helping merchants reduce failed payments and increase revenue. With fast integration through APIs and plugins for platforms like WooCommerce, Razorpay makes it easier to manage online payments.
It also offers tools for business banking, payroll, and marketplaces, helping merchants run their financial operations and scale without hassle.
3. PayU India
PayU India lets merchants accept over 150 payment methods, including UPI, net banking, cards, and wallets. It offers simple integration for websites and apps, customizable checkout options, instant refunds, and anti-fraud tools. These features help reduce failed transactions, lower drop-offs at checkout, and improve cash flow.
For online businesses across India, PayU is a partner that supports growth while keeping the payment process smooth for customers.
4. Cashfree Payments
Cashfree helps businesses collect payments, send payouts, and manage international transactions. It supports cards, UPI, net banking, and wallets. With instant refunds, secure card tokenization, and developer-friendly APIs, merchants can integrate payments quickly and reduce failed transactions.
Paperless onboarding allows startups and growing businesses to start accepting payments fast, reduce drop-offs, and scale operations across India and beyond.
5. Paytm Payment Gateway
Paytm Payment Gateway lets merchants accept payments through cards, UPI, net banking, and the Paytm wallet. Multiple payment options help reduce cart drop-offs and recover lost revenue. Its dashboard allows businesses to track payments, manage refunds, and monitor transactions easily.
For SMEs and startups, Paytm not only handles payments but also helps improve customer retention and repeat sales.
6. CCAvenue
CCAvenue supports payments via cards, net banking, wallets, UPI, and EMIs, including multi-currency options for businesses targeting global customers. Features like smart routing to increase success rates and the ability to store customer details for faster repeat purchases help reduce drop-offs and churn.
White-label solutions let businesses maintain branding across checkout. For merchants looking to grow domestically and internationally, CCAvenue helps increase conversions and keep payments running smoothly.
What are the key factors to consider when choosing a payment gateway?
Choosing the right payment gateway is about more than just processing transactions it directly affects customer experience, conversion rates, and business growth. Here are the most important factors to evaluate before making a decision:
Payment Methods Supported: Ensure the gateway covers the payment methods most relevant to your customers whether that’s UPI, cards, net banking, wallets, or international currencies. Wider coverage reduces drop-offs and improves customer satisfaction.
Transaction Costs: Every gateway has its own pricing structure, which may include setup fees, transaction charges, or annual maintenance. Understanding these costs upfront helps protect margins and avoid unexpected expenses.
Settlement Speed: Faster settlements mean quicker access to your funds and healthier cash flow. Look for gateways that align with your business needs, whether that’s instant payouts or daily, weekly, or custom cycles.
Success Rates and Reliability: High uptime and strong transaction success rates ensure smoother customer journeys and fewer failed payments. Gateways that use intelligent routing and retries can significantly improve reliability.
Ease of Integration: Depending on your business model, you may need simple plug-and-play solutions or more advanced integrations with APIs and SDKs. The right gateway should fit your technical capabilities without creating unnecessary complexity.
Security and Compliance: Robust security features such as PCI-DSS compliance, tokenization, and fraud detection are non-negotiable. A secure payment environment builds customer trust and safeguards business revenue.
Customer Support: Strong merchant support ensures quick resolutions during technical issues or high-volume campaigns. Around-the-clock support and dedicated account management can be crucial for smooth operations.
Scalability and Advanced Features: As your business grows, the gateway should be able to support larger transaction volumes and advanced features like recurring billing, subscription management, analytics, and multi-entity handling.
Summing Up
India offers a wide spectrum of payment gateway options catering to different business needs and customer preferences. Domestic gateways focus on smooth integration with local payment methods like UPI, cards, and wallets, while international gateways provide multi-currency support and global transaction capabilities. Each solution brings its own strengths, whether it’s speed, scalability, ease of use, or advanced features for growing businesses.
By carefully considering factors such as business size, target audience, and operational goals, companies can select gateways that simplify payments, enhance customer experience, and support sustainable growth.
For businesses looking for a reliable, scalable, and feature-rich solution in India, PhonePe Payment Gateway is a strong choice.
