Integration Guides

Payment Gateway Integration in India: Razorpay, Cashfree and PayU Compared

How to choose between Razorpay, Cashfree Payments and PayU: what to compare, where each is strong, the integration flow common to all three and mistakes to avoid.

Purushottam Kumar Suman

Founder & CEO, Drema AI

September 13, 20268 min read

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Razorpay, Cashfree Payments and PayU are all RBI-authorised payment aggregators with broadly similar payment methods and published pricing. The differences that matter show up after launch: success rates on your traffic, settlement speed, how refunds and disputes are handled, and how good the products around the gateway are.

What to compare

Headline transaction fees are negotiable at volume and tend to converge. Compare these instead.

Payment methodsUPI including intent and AutoPay, cards, net banking, wallets, EMI and pay later

Success rateOn your customer mix; ask for data by method and bank

SettlementStandard cycle, instant settlement options and their cost

OnboardingTime to activate and documentation for your business category

Developer experienceDocumentation, SDKs, sandbox and webhooks

Adjacent productsSubscriptions, payouts, split settlements, payment links and verification APIs

Support and disputesResponse times, chargeback handling and account management

Where each tends to be strong

All three cover the basics. These are general tendencies, not rankings; test with your own use case.

RazorpayWidely used by startups; polished documentation and checkout; broad product suite including subscriptions, marketplace routing and business banking

Cashfree PaymentsKnown for payouts and bulk disbursals, split settlements and verification APIs alongside the gateway

PayULong-established with large enterprise merchants; strong on EMI and affordability options

Pricing in outline

Published standard rates for domestic cards, net banking and wallets are around two per cent per transaction plus GST, with higher rates for international cards, EMI and some premium instruments. Pricing for UPI and RuPay debit follows government and RBI policy on merchant discount rate. Instant settlement, subscriptions and payouts are charged separately. Get written quotes on your expected mix.

About 2%

Published standard rate for most domestic methods

+ GST

On the fee

Negotiable

At meaningful volume

The integration flow is the same

Whichever you pick, the secure pattern does not change.

Mark an order paid only when your server has verified the signature or received the webhook.

1. Create an order on your serverWith amount and your order ID, using secret keys

2. Open checkout on the clientHosted page, embedded checkout or SDK, with the order ID

3. Customer paysThe gateway handles authentication

4. Verify on your serverCheck the signature on the response; never trust the client's success callback alone

5. WebhooksTreat the server-to-server webhook as the source of truth for final status

6. ReconcileMatch settlements to orders daily

Common mistakes

Most payment bugs come from a short list.

Trusting client-side successNo idempotency on webhooksIgnoring pending statusAmount mismatch not checkedSecret keys in the appNo refund flowNo reconciliationSingle gateway with no fallback

One gateway or two

For an early-stage product, one gateway is enough. Once payments are business-critical, integrate a second and route by method, success rate or downtime. Build a thin payments layer in your own code, with your own order and transaction tables, so that adding or switching providers does not touch the rest of the product.

Sources · last reviewed October 1, 2026

This article explains what to build, not legal advice. Rules change; confirm against the current official text before relying on it.

Written by

Purushottam Kumar Suman

Founder & CEO, Drema AI

Founder and CEO of Drema AI. Builds AI systems, SaaS platforms and industry software — and writes about what actually survives production.

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