Razorpay vs Cashfree vs PayU for Shopify: Gateway Fees, Platform Charges and Real Checkout Cost

If you run a Shopify store in India, you pay for payments twice. Shopify Payments is not offered here, so you add a third-party gateway, and Shopify charges its own transaction fee on top of what that gateway deducts before settlement. Most comparisons stop at the gateway’s headline rate, which on a low-volume store is the smaller of the two lines.

This guide compares Razorpay, Cashfree and PayU on what actually leaves your account: published rates by method, 18% GST on those fees, Shopify’s fee by plan, refunds and international orders. Rates checked October 2026. Promotions are kept separate from ongoing pricing, and where a provider publishes no number, this guide says so rather than estimating it.

Quick answer: Every prepaid Shopify order in India carries two fee lines, the gateway’s platform fee plus 18% GST, and Shopify’s third-party transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. As of October 2026 Razorpay charges 2% on domestic methods, Cashfree 1.95%, and PayU’s Shopify page lists 0% UPI, 0.90% debit cards and 1.85% credit cards and netbanking. On Basic, Shopify’s line is usually the larger one, so plan choice matters as much as gateway choice.

Why does every Shopify order in India carry two fees?

Shopify Payments, the platform’s in-house processor, covers 41 countries and India is not one of them. Its help page says stores in unlisted countries must use a third-party provider, and that Shopify then charges a third-party transaction fee on every order it processes: products minus discounts, plus tax and shipping, times your plan’s rate, billed over a 30-day cycle on your Shopify invoice, separately from the gateway’s deduction.

Three details matter. The fee is not charged on manual methods: cash on delivery, bank deposits, cheques, test orders, draft orders marked as paid and POS orders. It is not returned when you refund an order. And for stores created on or after 12 May 2025 it also applies to the part of an order paid with store credit or gift cards.

What is in the full cost stack?

A prepaid order carries up to five layers. Plan prices are from Shopify’s India pricing page as of October 2026, in INR per month, excluding taxes.

On a Rs 2,000 order Shopify’s fee is Rs 40, Rs 20, Rs 12 or Rs 4 by plan. Basic to Grow on monthly billing costs Rs 5,453 more a month and saves 1% of prepaid GMV, so it breaks even at roughly Rs 5.45 lakh of monthly prepaid sales, or about Rs 4.1 lakh on annual billing. On Basic, Shopify’s 2% equals Razorpay’s entire platform fee and exceeds Cashfree’s and PayU’s, so a low-volume store should attack the Shopify line first.

Setup and annual maintenance mostly stay out of the stack. Razorpay’s pricing page lists Rs 0 setup and Rs 0 maintenance, and PayU zero setup and zero annual maintenance on its Standard Plan with a “T&C apply” note. Cashfree’s own pages do not agree: its public pricing page says you will be charged Rs 4,999 annually as an AMC, while its help-centre pricing page, accurate as of 10 August 2026 by its own statement, says there is no setup fee or AMC. The two pages disagree; ask Cashfree which version governs your account and get it in writing at onboarding.

GST applies to the gateway’s fee, not to your order, so 2% becomes 2.36% of the order and 1.95% becomes 2.30%. Registered merchants can usually claim input tax credit on it.

What do the three gateways charge on Shopify?

All three integrate as third-party providers, so Shopify’s fee applies on top of each. These are standard published rates as of October 2026, before GST; promotions follow below. Our Razorpay and Cashfree pricing comparison covers the two Indian providers on their own.

Razorpay’s pricing page carries the 2% headline and the 2.15% RuPay credit on UPI line, while the method-level rates above come from Razorpay’s own 2026 pricing explainers, and Cashfree’s from its help-centre pricing page. The PayU column is from its Shopify landing page; PayU’s general pricing page instead lists 2% for Visa, Mastercard, netbanking, wallets and BNPL, 3% for Diners, Amex, EMI and international, and UPI varying by business type. The two pages disagree; ask PayU which version governs your account, and get the rates in writing at activation.

Worked example: 11 orders of Rs 2,000 each

This is an illustrative calculation, not a tested result. Eleven orders of Rs 2,000 each including tax and shipping: ten domestic (5 UPI, 3 credit card, 2 netbanking) plus one international order on an overseas Visa card settled in INR, with one credit card order refunded in full. Standard rates, GST at 18% on gateway fees, no promotions, and no FX conversion or chargeback protection, which none of the three publishes.

On the ten domestic orders, Razorpay’s 2% is Rs 400 plus Rs 72 GST, so Rs 472; Cashfree’s 1.95% is Rs 390 plus Rs 70.20, so Rs 460.20; PayU charges nothing on the five UPI orders and 1.85% on the rest, Rs 185 plus Rs 33.30, so Rs 218.30. Internationally, Razorpay’s 3% comes to Rs 70.80 with GST, Cashfree’s 2.99% to Rs 70.56 plus an unpublished FX charge, PayU’s 2.85% to Rs 67.26. Across the Rs 22,000 of GMV, Shopify takes Rs 440 on Basic, Rs 220 on Grow, Rs 132 on Advanced or Rs 44 on Plus.

On the refund, the customer gets the full Rs 2,000 and Shopify keeps its fee: Rs 40 on Basic, Rs 20 on Grow, Rs 12 on Advanced. Razorpay’s refund FAQs state that fees on a captured payment are not reversed and that regular refunds carry no charge, so Razorpay keeps Rs 47.20 and the order has cost Rs 87.20 on Basic with no revenue. Cashfree and PayU do not publish whether the original fee is retained, so treat retention as a merchant agreement question.

How do the Razorpay and Cashfree 0% offers compare?

Two of the three run 0% promotions for new merchants as of October 2026. PayU has no published introductory offer; its pricing page describes “zero hidden charges” as a standing feature.

The published terms of Razorpay’s 90-day 0% platform fee offer are specific, and worth reading in full before you count on them. It covers merchants with KYC complete and activation on or after 1 July 2026, excludes anyone who transacted earlier, and runs 90 days from activation or to Rs 5,00,000 of cumulative transaction value, whichever comes first, on domestic transactions only. There is one redemption per PAN or bank account, on the first activated MID only; a Rs 199 plus taxes KYC fee may apply; unused allowance lapses; and if credit cards exceed 90% of volume it can be withdrawn with standard charges applied retrospectively.

Cashfree’s festive offer is wider and longer: sign-ups on or after 21 July 2026, 12:00 PM IST, excluding earlier transactors, custom-pricing accounts and partner-referred merchants, running to 31 March 2027 or Rs 20,00,000 of cumulative GMV as a one-time cap, on domestic payment gateway transactions only. It can be withdrawn if credit cards reach 60% of GMV, checked once GMV hits Rs 1 lakh. Both offers end into standard pricing automatically, Razorpay’s platform fees and Cashfree’s 1.95% plus taxes.

Three terms are worth reading closely:

• Neither waives GST. Cashfree charges 18% on the standard 1.95% even on waived transactions. Razorpay’s terms say GST is not waived but do not state whether it is computed on the notional 2%, so get that in writing at onboarding.
• Razorpay excludes prepaid cards, corporate credit cards, Amex, Diners and all EMI, and per its own explainer international cards and bank transfers.
• Cashfree excludes Amex, Diners, corporate cards, EMI, prepaid, Pay Later, e-mandates, international cards and any method carrying MDR of 3% or more.

The cap decides what either offer is worth. At an average order of Rs 2,000, Rs 5 lakh is 250 prepaid orders, so a store taking 10 prepaid orders a day exhausts Razorpay’s allowance in under a month.

Neither offer touches Shopify. The Rs 22,000 batch on Basic inside Razorpay’s window costs about Rs 510.80, or 2.32% of GMV: Rs 0 domestic platform fee, Rs 70.80 on the excluded international order, Rs 440 to Shopify, plus Rs 72 if GST is charged on the waived 2%. Under Cashfree’s offer it is about Rs 580.76, or 2.64%: Rs 70.20 of GST on the notional 1.95%, Rs 70.56 plus FX internationally, Rs 440 to Shopify. During either promotion Shopify’s fee is 75% to 85% of what you pay, so budget on the ongoing numbers.

How do the three Shopify integrations compare?

The standard plugins do the same job: redirect or embed, collect, return the customer to Shopify. Razorpay’s “All-in-one Razorpay Payment Gateway” app needs no API keys, and stores integrated before 28 April 2022 must migrate. Cashfree offers its “1Cashfree” provider plus a separate cards app for Shopify’s native checkout, and PayU a hosted-page “1PayU” app plus its own onsite cards app. All three cover UPI, cards, wallets and netbanking; Cashfree and PayU add BNPL.

The differences that matter are operational. Razorpay’s Shopify plugin documentation states that only the account owner can connect the store, after a website review, and that one merchant ID maps to one store. The plugin supports only two-decimal currencies, so USD, EUR and INR work but JPY and BHD do not. Cashfree needs KYC complete and capture set to automatic, claims 140-plus currencies with INR settlement within T+2, and does not support UPI on non-INR orders. PayU is set up with a key and salt, may start with limited payment modes, and settles in INR while customers pay in their own currency.

Accelerated checkout and COD tools are separate products everywhere: Razorpay’s “Razorpay COD & Magic Checkout” app, free to install with additional charges billed in USD; Cashfree’s One Click Checkout and Cash on Delivery apps; and PayU’s CommercePro Checkout. Razorpay does not publish a per-order charge for Magic Checkout, Cashfree does not publish one for One Click Checkout and PayU does not publish one for CommercePro, so price them separately.

Checkout limits, refunds and reconciliation

Each plugin inherits Shopify’s constraints. Razorpay’s FAQ notes that payment options cannot be reordered, so Razorpay sits at the bottom of the list, and that subscriptions are not supported. Cashfree’s docs add that a changed domain must be whitelisted and the plugin reconnected, and that orders stay “Authorized” under manual capture. PayU’s FAQs note that offers are not supported on its onsite card app.

Refunds and reconciliation differ more than fees. PayU documents refunds from the Shopify admin or its own Dashboard, partial refunds per line item, and timelines from instant on wallets to 7 to 14 working days cross-border. Cashfree has supported refunds from the Shopify dashboard since December 2018 across all payment modes. Razorpay’s Shopify pages do not describe the refund workflow, or state whether a standard-plugin refund can be initiated from the Shopify admin; its general refund FAQs say normal refunds take 5 to 7 business days and are not charged, while Instant Refunds carry a fee the docs do not quantify. Reconciliation keys are documented for two of the three: Cashfree maps Shopify’s Payment ID to its own order_id, and PayU’s transaction ID sits in the Payment Reference column of the Shopify order export. Since the gateway’s fee comes off before settlement and Shopify’s arrives on a separate invoice up to 30 days later, your books need both IDs per order.

The UPI MDR change to watch

UPI has so far carried zero bank MDR, so what Razorpay and Cashfree charge on UPI is their own platform fee. On 15 September 2026 NPCI announced a framework under which person-to-merchant UPI payments above Rs 2,000 attract 0.4% MDR on the full amount, capped at Rs 300, with payments of Rs 2,000 or less staying free. It was due to start on 15 October 2026; on 13 October NPCI deferred it to after Diwali, and as of 30 October 2026 no new date has been published.

Cashfree has stated it will not add a separate fee on top of its 1.95%, which it describes as inclusive of MDR. Razorpay’s pricing page still describes UPI as zero MDR with a 2% platform fee and has not published how it will treat the change, and neither has PayU. If your average order is above Rs 2,000 and your mix is UPI-heavy, this is the largest open variable in your cost model.

Which gateway should you choose?

Razorpay and Cashfree are close enough on the gateway line that the decision turns on everything else. Cashfree’s 1.95% is marginally cheaper, its offer cap is four times larger, and it settles at T+1 against Razorpay’s typical T+2. Razorpay’s figures are the most consistently published of the three, its Rs 0 setup and AMC position is unambiguous where Cashfree’s is not, and its plugin needs no API keys. PayU’s Shopify rates are the lowest on the methods most Indian stores use, a real saving if they hold for your account, but contradicted by PayU’s own pricing page.

Volume and mix decide the rest. A low-volume store on Basic should fix the plan line before chasing a 0.05 point gateway difference, and a UPI-heavy store selling above Rs 2,000 should treat the pending MDR framework as the deciding variable. For a direct-to-consumer brand, our Razorpay and Cashfree comparison for D2C stores covers the operational side, and our guide to choosing a secure payment gateway in India covers the security checks that sit alongside price.

What to confirm before you sign

1. Your plan’s third-party fee in Settings > Billing, and the Basic-versus-Grow break-even on your own prepaid GMV.
2. The rate card in writing at activation, by method, including international cards, FX conversion, instant settlement and chargeback fees. Ask PayU which of its two cards applies, and Cashfree whether the Rs 4,999 AMC applies.
3. The promotional terms: cap, duration, excluded methods, fair-usage thresholds, the pricing that follows, and whether GST is charged on waived fees.
4. Fee retention and partial refund behaviour, in the merchant agreement rather than the FAQ.
5. The constraints that touch your store: one MID, owner-only connection, automatic capture, INR-only UPI, two-decimal currencies.
6. A separate quote for accelerated checkout and COD tools, and the reconciliation key documented before go-live.
7. That the old provider stays active for refunds on historical orders.

FAQs

1. Is Shopify Payments available in India in 2026?

No. Shopify’s supported-countries page lists 41 countries and India is not among them. Indian stores must use a third-party provider such as Razorpay, Cashfree or PayU, and Shopify charges its third-party fee on each order they process: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, as of October 2026.

2. What happens to fees when I refund a Shopify order?

Shopify states its third-party fee is not returned on a refund, and Razorpay states fees on a captured payment are not reversed, while regular refunds carry no charge. Cashfree and PayU do not publish their position on fee retention on the pages reviewed. A refunded Rs 2,000 order on Basic with Razorpay costs about Rs 87 with no revenue.

3. Does Razorpay’s 90-day 0% offer waive Shopify’s fee?

No. It waives Razorpay’s domestic platform fee for 90 days or Rs 5 lakh of cumulative transaction value, whichever comes first, for merchants activated on or after 1 July 2026. GST, a possible Rs 199 KYC fee, international cards, EMI, Amex, Diners, corporate and prepaid cards sit outside it. Shopify’s fee is unchanged.

4. Will the new UPI MDR increase my Shopify gateway cost?

Possibly, for orders above Rs 2,000. NPCI’s framework sets 0.4% MDR on person-to-merchant UPI payments above Rs 2,000, capped at Rs 300, deferred to after Diwali 2026 with no start date notified as of 30 October. Cashfree says its 1.95% already includes MDR. Razorpay and PayU have not published their treatment.