Razorpay vs Shopify Payments vs Cashfree: Which Converts Best in India?

If you run a Shopify store in India, the payment gateway you choose has a real effect on conversion. Not by 1 or 2 percent. By 5 to 15 percent. The gateway controls how UPI feels, how COD is handled, how fast the checkout loads, and what happens when payment fails.

We have audited Indian Shopify stores on all three of the major gateways (Razorpay, Shopify Payments India, Cashfree). Here is the honest comparison, from an operator's view, not a sales pitch from any provider.

Quick verdict

If you want the short answer:

• Best overall for most Indian D2C in 2026: Razorpay. UPI-first, COD-friendly, robust apps ecosystem, India-built.
• Best if you want zero setup and one tax-and-payment stack: Shopify Payments India. Decent, simple, but COD experience is weaker.
• Best if you want lower fees and fast UPI: Cashfree. Strong UPI flow, slightly trickier integration.

Read on for why.

What actually matters in an Indian payment gateway

When auditing stores, we look at five things, ranked by impact on conversion:

1. UPI experience. Most Indian buyers want UPI. The gateway has to make UPI fast (intent flow), one-tap, reliable across all UPI apps.
2. COD handling. Does the gateway integrate with your COD process (OTP, token, confirmation)?
3. Checkout speed. How fast does the payment page load? Above 3 seconds on mobile is a problem.
4. Failure handling. When payment fails (common in India), does the buyer get a clear retry option, or do they give up?
5. Settlement and dispute support. Slow settlement and bad support cost you real cash flow and resolution time.

Fees matter, but they are a smaller factor than the five above. A gateway with 0.2 percent higher fees but 5 percent higher conversion is a much better deal.

Razorpay

Razorpay is the default choice for most Indian D2C stores today, for good reason.

Strengths:

• Magic Checkout: a one-page, India-native checkout with UPI intent flow, address autocomplete, and built-in COD with OTP. Standalone product, integrates with Shopify.
• Standard Checkout: lighter, also fast, fully UPI-supported.
• Comprehensive UPI support including all major apps (GPay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM).
• Reliable settlement (T+2 for most, T+1 for some).
• Strong API ecosystem and large app ecosystem on Shopify.
• Good dispute and refund tooling.
• Native COD support with prepaid push tools.

Weaknesses:

• Pricing on Magic Checkout includes a per-order success fee, which can hurt low-AOV stores.
• Support quality varies. Email support can be slow during festive peaks.
• Some buyers report UPI timeouts on certain banks, especially mid-festive sale.

Best for:

• D2C stores between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 5 crore monthly revenue.
• Stores with significant COD share.
• Stores that need WhatsApp confirm and abandoned-cart recovery built in.

Cost:

• Razorpay Standard: 2 percent of order value, GST extra. UPI is often 0 percent or close to it now.
• Magic Checkout: 1.4 to 2 percent on top of the standard fee, plus per-order success fee. Varies by plan.

Shopify Payments India

Shopify launched its own Payments for India in 2023 and 2024, building on the Indian payments stack. It is a simple, integrated option.

Strengths:

• Zero setup. Activate it inside Shopify, no separate signup.
• Single dashboard for sales, payments, and refunds.
• Reliable UPI support.
• Lower per-transaction fee on some plans compared to Razorpay.
• No additional checkout product to choose. Just turn it on.

Weaknesses:

• COD handling is basic. You will still need an additional app (GoKwik, Razorpay Magic, Confirmly) for serious COD optimisation.
• Less mature than Razorpay or Cashfree on India-specific features.
• The checkout UI is Shopify's default. Improving in 2025 and 2026 but not yet as India-aware as Razorpay Magic.
• Smaller third-party Shopify app integration than Razorpay.

Best for:

• New stores under Rs 5 lakh monthly revenue who want one less integration to manage.
• Stores with low COD share (under 30 percent).
• Founders who do not want to deal with a separate payment provider's dashboard.

Cost:

• Around 2 percent on cards, varies on Shopify plan. UPI fees roughly 1 percent or less.

Cashfree

Cashfree is India-built, fast-growing, and has a strong UPI experience.

Strengths:

• Very fast UPI flow with intent support.
• Lower fees than Razorpay on some plans.
• Solid API and webhook support for engineering teams.
• Good payouts and disbursement tools (useful if you do influencer payouts).
• Newer dashboard, cleaner UI than older Razorpay screens.

Weaknesses:

• Smaller Shopify-specific app ecosystem.
• Magic Checkout-equivalent (Cashfree Checkout) is good but slightly less mature than Razorpay's.
• Brand recognition slightly lower with buyers. Some Indian buyers feel safer seeing "Razorpay" in the URL bar than "Cashfree".
• COD handling needs additional apps for full optimisation.

Best for:

• Tech-comfortable founders who want lower fees.
• Stores doing high UPI share (above 60 percent of prepaid).
• Stores that need disbursement tools alongside payments.

Cost:

• Standard pricing around 1.75 percent. UPI often 0 percent.

Other gateways worth mentioning

A few others that come up in Indian D2C, briefly:

• PayU. Older, established, decent. Less integrated into Shopify-native flows. Best for marketplaces and businesses with custom platforms.
• Easebuzz. Solid backup. Good if you need a second gateway for redundancy.
• CCAvenue. Old guard. Heavier integration, less modern UI.
• GoKwik. Not a gateway exactly, but a checkout layer that runs on top of Razorpay or Cashfree. India-built, COD-focused, RTO-aware. Worth considering as your checkout even if your payments run through someone else.

The case for two gateways

Some stores run a primary gateway (Razorpay) and a secondary one (Cashfree or PayU) for redundancy. The Shopify storefront tries the primary first. If it fails, it falls back to the secondary.

Why bother:

• Payment failures are a real source of lost sales in India. Bank UPI outages, gateway slowdowns, card network issues all happen.
• A 5 percent failure rate that becomes a 0.5 percent failure rate with retry-on-secondary lifts conversion measurably.
• Costs almost nothing to set up.

For stores doing more than Rs 50 lakh monthly, two gateways is worth the integration effort.

How to decide

A simple decision tree:

• If your monthly revenue is under Rs 5 lakh and you want minimum complexity: Shopify Payments India.
• If your monthly revenue is Rs 5 lakh to Rs 5 crore and COD is significant: Razorpay (often Magic Checkout).
• If your monthly revenue is Rs 5 lakh plus and you want lower fees and a sharp UPI flow: Cashfree.
• If you are doing over Rs 50 lakh monthly: primary plus secondary, for redundancy.

For most readers, the answer will be Razorpay. That is not because it is the cheapest. It is because it has the most India-specific features built in for the typical D2C use case.

Beyond the gateway: what actually drives conversion

Picking the right gateway helps. But it is not the whole story. The biggest checkout conversion wins on Indian Shopify stores come from:

• UPI as the first payment option visible.
• COD shown clearly on the product page, not just at checkout.
• One-page checkout on mobile, not multi-step.
• No surprise fees at the last step.
• Address autocomplete based on pincode.
• WhatsApp abandoned-cart recovery.

The gateway makes some of these easier, but you still have to set them up. We cover the full checkout playbook in our Shopify checkout optimization guide.

See what your store is missing

The gateway question is one of about 50 things we check on Indian Shopify stores. Whether you are on Razorpay, Shopify Payments, or Cashfree, the bigger conversion leaks usually lie elsewhere: in trust signals, COD setup, pincode check, mobile speed, reviews placement, RTO drivers.

MakeMeConvert reads your live store and tells you exactly which of these are leaking sales on your store right now. Paste your store link, get your score in 2 minutes, free.

Run a free MakeMeConvert on your store now.