Payment Gateway Charges in India: Complete Comparison (2026)

If you’re setting up online payments for your business in India, the pricing pages rarely tell the whole story. Every gateway advertises a headline transaction rate, but the real cost includes setup fees, settlement speed, GST, and what happens with international payments – details that only show up once you’re already signed up.

We compared five of India’s most-used payment gateways on the numbers that actually affect your bottom line, so you can pick the right one before you commit.

Quick Comparison: Payment Gateway Charges in India

*Cashfree’s 0% rate is a limited-period promotional offer for all merchants — confirm current eligibility on their pricing page before signing up.

How Payment Gateway Charges Actually Work in India

Before picking a gateway, it helps to understand what you’re actually paying for:

Transaction Discount Rate (TDR) is the core fee – a percentage of each transaction the gateway keeps. This varies by payment method: UPI transactions typically carry lower or zero MDR (mandated by government policy), while international cards attract the highest rates, often 3% or more.

GST applies on top of every gateway’s fee at 18%. So a 2% TDR effectively becomes 2.36% once GST is added — always check whether the rate you’re comparing already includes this.

Setup and annual maintenance fees used to be standard across the industry but most major gateways (Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU) have dropped them entirely. CCAvenue is the notable exception, still charging a setup fee on its premium plan.

Settlement time is how long it takes for funds to actually reach your bank account after a successful transaction. This matters more than most businesses initially realize — a gateway holding your money for an extra day can mean real cash-flow strain if you’re reordering inventory or paying vendors on tight timelines.

1. Razorpay

Domestic fee: 2% + GST across cards, UPI, net banking, and wallets

Setup fee: None

Settlement: T+2 standard, instant settlement available for an additional fee

Razorpay isn’t just a payment gateway anymore, it’s grown into a broader financial stack for Indian businesses, covering payment links, subscription billing, vendor payouts through RazorpayX, and even business banking. That breadth is really what you’re paying for.

It supports 100+ payment modes, with a checkout flow most Indian shoppers already recognize from other apps they use daily. The standout feature is Smart Routing — it detects bank downtimes in real time and automatically reroutes a failed transaction through a different path, which matters more than it sounds like on paper. Payment failures in India happen a lot more often than most business owners assume, usually because of bank server hiccups or delayed OTPs, and every failed payment is a customer who almost bought from you and didn’t.

Where Razorpay actually earns its slightly higher rate over Cashfree is the ecosystem around it — subscription billing if you run a SaaS product, payment links you can just text or WhatsApp to a customer, and refunds that land back in their account fast. It’s less about being the cheapest and more about not having to stitch together five different tools.

Best for: Businesses that want one reliable, well-documented gateway and don’t want to spend hours chasing a 0.2% difference between providers.

2. Cashfree Payments

Domestic fee: 1.95% + GST standard (0% promotional rate for Platform Fees
on sales up to ₹20L*)

Setup fee: None

Settlement: T+2 standard, with instant settlement within 15 minutes for a small additional fee

Cashfree built its name on two things: a slightly better headline rate than Razorpay, and genuinely fast settlement. The standard T+2 cycle already matches the rest of the industry, but its instant settlement option is priced more reasonably than most competitors’ version of the same feature — worth checking if getting funds same-day actually changes how you run your business.

The part that doesn’t get talked about enough is Cashfree’s payout side. If your business needs to send money out at scale — vendor payments, refunds, gig-worker payouts, marketplace disbursals — Cashfree’s payout API is genuinely one of the stronger ones in Indian fintech, not something bolted on as an afterthought to the payment collection side.

Best for: Cost-conscious businesses, and any business that needs to both collect and disburse money, not just collect it.

3. PayU

Domestic fee: Approximately 2% + GST, varies by plan and negotiated volume

Setup fee: None on standard plans

Settlement: T+2

PayU has been around longer than most of the names on this list, and that maturity shows up in how it’s built — less about a single flat rate for everyone, more about negotiated pricing tiers once you’re processing real volume. That makes it a slightly worse fit if you’re just starting out and want a simple number to plan around, but a genuinely good fit once your monthly volume gives you room to negotiate.

It also handles international payment methods well, which is useful if you’re planning to sell beyond an India-only customer base at some point — not every gateway on this list treats that as a first-class use case.

Best for: Established or scaling businesses with enough volume to make rate negotiation worthwhile.

4. Instamojo

Domestic fee: 2% + ₹3 per transaction + GST

Setup fee: None on the free store; premium store at ₹7,999/year with a slightly different rate

Settlement: 24–48 hours

Instamojo isn’t really trying to win on transaction rate — it’s solving a completely different problem, which is speed to launch. If you’re a freelancer, coach, or solo creator without a website, Instamojo lets you start collecting payments the same day through a hosted storefront called Mojostore, or just by sharing a payment link — no coding, no web developer, no waiting around.

The flat ₹3-per-transaction fee on top of the percentage is a real cost disadvantage once you’re doing volume, but if you’re selling a handful of digital products or coaching sessions a month, that small extra fee is a fair trade for not having to build a website first.

Best for: Freelancers, solo sellers, coaches, and small creators who want to start selling today, not after a two-week website build.

5. CCAvenue

Domestic fee: Approximately 2% + GST

Setup fee: ₹0 on the “Startup PRO” plan; up to ₹30,000 on the “Privilege” plan

Annual maintenance: ₹1,200, often waived in year one on Startup plans

Settlement: T+2 to T+3

CCAvenue is one of the oldest payment gateways still operating in India, and honestly, it shows — in both good and less good ways. It’s the only gateway on this list that still charges a real setup fee on its higher tier. The “Startup PRO” plan is fee-free and reasonably competitive with the newer players, but the “Privilege” plan aimed at bigger businesses carries a genuine ₹30,000 upfront cost that pretty much every newer gateway has done away with entirely.

What you get in exchange is longevity — broad bank integration built up over years and a track record that some more risk-averse businesses find reassuring over a newer, flashier dashboard.

Best for: Businesses that specifically want an established, long-running provider — though for most new businesses, the newer gateways are simply easier to get started with.

Which Payment Gateway Should You Choose?

• Freelancer or solo seller just starting out: Instamojo/Cashfree — fastest to set up, no website required
• D2C brand or online store: Razorpay or Cashfree — both offer strong UPI support, no setup fees, and solid checkout experiences
• High transaction volume (₹10L+/month): PayU or negotiated rates with Razorpay/Cashfree — volume unlocks better pricing across all major gateways
• Cash-flow sensitive business: Cashfree — fastest standard settlement plus low-cost instant settlement options
• Need both payment collection and payouts: Cashfree — strongest payout/disbursement infrastructure among the five