Your products are loaded, the theme looks right and you are ready to take your first order. Then you open the payments settings and realise this is the one part of a Shopify store in India that does not work out of the box. There is no built-in way to accept cards or UPI here until you sign up with a gateway, get approved and connect it. Until then, the only option you can switch on is a manual method such as cash on delivery.
This guide covers setting up a Shopify payment gateway in India: how to choose one, what the gateway will ask of you, how the connection works, and how to test it before a real customer depends on it. It is about the setup decisions, not a ranking of providers.
Why you need an outside gateway at all
Shopify’s own payment processing service is not offered to stores registered in India. Instead, Indian stores use a third-party payment provider that has an integration with Shopify. Well-known Indian gateways such as Razorpay, PayU, CCAvenue and Cashfree offer one, and the list available to your store appears inside Shopify’s payment settings.
Using an outside gateway has two consequences worth knowing from the start. First, you sign a separate agreement with the gateway, and they handle KYC, fees and settlement. Second, on some Shopify plans, Shopify charges its own fee on orders paid through an outside gateway. We go through how those two fees stack in our post on Shopify payment fees for Indian stores.
Picking a Shopify payment gateway in India
Most mainstream gateways cover the basics. The differences show up in the details, so compare on these points rather than on brand familiarity:
- Payment methods. UPI, debit and credit cards, net banking, wallets, and pay-later options if you want them. Check which are switched on by default and which need separate activation.
- How it connects to Shopify. Some gateways connect through Shopify’s payment settings, others through an app they publish. Read the gateway’s own Shopify setup guide before you sign up.
- Checkout experience. Ask whether the customer completes payment on a page or window controlled by the gateway, and how it looks on a phone. A confusing step at payment loses orders.
- Fees by method. Gateways often price UPI, domestic cards and international cards differently. Get the rate card in writing.
- Settlement. How soon money reaches your account, and whether faster settlement costs extra.
- Refunds and disputes. How refunds are issued, whether they can be triggered from Shopify, and what a chargeback costs.
- Support. Who you can contact when payments fail on a Saturday evening, and how.
For a wider comparison of Indian providers beyond Shopify, see our overview of payment gateways for Indian small businesses.
What the gateway will ask for
Before a gateway activates live payments, it verifies your business. Expect to provide identity and address proof, business registration or proprietorship proof, a bank account in the business’s name, and often your GSTIN if you are registered. The gateway will also review your website.
That website review is where Shopify stores often get held up. Gateways generally expect to see, on the live store:
- clear product pages with prices;
- contact details, including an address and an email or phone number;
- terms of service, a privacy policy, and a refund and cancellation policy;
- a shipping or delivery policy.
Shopify can generate template policies in its settings, but templates should be edited to match what you actually do. A gateway may reject a store with placeholder text. The full document list is in our guide to documents for payment gateway approval.
Accepting payments on Shopify in India: the connection steps
Exact screens differ by gateway, but the sequence is usually this:
- Sign up with the gateway and complete KYC. You can often get test credentials before approval.
- Open Settings, then Payments, in your Shopify admin. Look for the option to add a payment provider, and search for your gateway. If the gateway uses an app, install it from the App Store instead.
- Enter the credentials the gateway gives you, usually a key and a secret, or log in through the gateway’s own connection screen.
- Choose test mode first if the gateway offers it, and run through a test payment.
- Switch to live mode once the gateway has approved your account and given you live credentials.
- Turn on manual methods you want alongside it, such as cash on delivery, and write clear instructions for each.
Keep a note of which account email you used with the gateway, which person in your business owns that login, and where the API keys are stored. These details are easy to lose.
UPI, international cards and COD
UPI
For many Indian customers UPI is the first choice at checkout. Through a gateway, UPI usually appears as a QR code on desktop and as an option to pay with a UPI app on phones. Check both views during testing. Our post on taking UPI payments on a website explains the options in more detail.
International cards
If you sell to customers abroad, international card acceptance usually needs to be requested and approved separately by the gateway, often with extra checks. Do not assume it is on just because domestic cards work.
Cash on delivery
COD is added in Shopify as a manual payment method. It needs no gateway, but it does need a courier who collects cash and a plan for orders that are refused at the door. Many stores limit COD by order value or region to manage that risk.
Testing before your first real order
Shopify includes a testing provider called Bogus Gateway that simulates successful and failed payments without real money. It is useful for checking the order flow and notifications, but it does not test your actual gateway. Test that too, using the gateway’s test mode if it has one, or a small live payment that you refund afterwards.
Check each of these:
- A successful payment creates a paid order in Shopify.
- A failed or cancelled payment does not create a paid order, and the customer can try again.
- The customer receives the order confirmation email.
- The payment shows in the gateway dashboard with the right order reference.
- A refund issued from Shopify, if your integration supports it, appears in the gateway dashboard.
- The whole flow works on a phone, with UPI and with a card.
Remove the testing provider once you are done, and switch the real gateway to live mode.
Who should own the gateway account
The gateway account receives your money, so it must belong to the business, not to the developer who set it up. Register it with the business’s legal name, PAN and bank account, and with an email address the business controls, ideally a shared one such as accounts@ rather than a personal inbox. Turn on two-step login if the gateway offers it.
If a developer needs access, give them a separate team login with limited permissions, or share only the API keys needed to connect Shopify. When their work ends, remove that login and, if they saw the keys, generate new ones and update them in Shopify.
Switching gateways later
You are not locked in. Shopify lets you change the third-party provider later. If you switch:
- complete KYC with the new gateway before disconnecting the old one;
- keep the old gateway account open until all refunds on its orders are settled, since refunds go back through the gateway that took the payment;
- test the new one with the same checklist you used at launch.
Problems that come up after launch
- Orders marked pending or abandoned although the customer paid. Usually the gateway’s confirmation did not reach Shopify. Check the gateway dashboard first, then contact the gateway with the payment reference.
- Customer charged, order not created. Similar cause. The gateway can confirm whether the payment succeeded and, if not captured, how it will be reversed.
- A payment method disappeared from checkout. Often a setting or activation change on the gateway’s side. Check the gateway dashboard before touching Shopify.
- Live mode never switched on. It is an easy step to forget, so check the mode the day you go live.
Gateway setup is one line in the overall build, and our guide to what a shopify website costs in india shows where it sits among the other setup tasks.
Where we fit
Connecting and testing a gateway, setting up COD and preparing the policy pages a gateway review looks for are all part of our Shopify development work. If you are doing it yourself, test with a phone, a UPI app and a card before you announce the launch. The first real customer should not be your tester.
Next in this series: Migrate Shopify to WooCommerce: A Step-by-Step Plan
