How to Choose a Payment Gateway in India Without Losing Your Mind

If you have ever searched for the payment gateway in India on Google you already know the problem. You will have many tabs open on your browser. Every website will claim to be the most trusted, the fastest and the cheapest payment gateway in India. However none of them will tell you what you actually want to know: which payment gateway will work for your business without any surprises after a months.

We talk to business owners every day at PayG and most of them did not start looking for a payment gateway. They started because they were frustrated. A customers payment failed at checkout. They lost the sale.. It took four days to settle the payment and they had to pay their employees in two days.. Their developer quit and nobody could explain why UPI Autopay was not working anymore.

So of making a list of the top 10 features to look for in a payment gateway let us talk about the things that actually cause problems for people.

The speed at which you get your money is important

Many payment gateways advertise that they can settle payments the next day like it is a special feature. For a school that collects fees or a bakery that has profit margins waiting a day or two for their money can cause cash flow problems. You should ask the payment gateway directly: If I take a payment today at 6 PM when will the money actually be in my account? You want to get the answer, not the answer they give you in their marketing materials.

The price you see is not always the price

This is the thing that frustrates business owners the most. The price they show you looks good at first. Then you have to add the GST, refund processing fees, chargeback fees and platform maintenance charges. Before you sign anything you should ask the payment gateway for a sample settlement report from another merchant. The numbers will tell you the truth, not the pricing page.

Your customers do not care about the technology you use. They will notice if it is not working well

Most payment gateways support UPI, cards, net banking and wallets. What matters is how it works when a customer is checking out. Does the UPI Autopay work properly? Does a saved card actually. Does the customer have to enter the 16 digits every time? If the checkout process is slow the customer may leave without buying anything. We have seen this happen.

The support you get is important not something extra

This is personal for us. When your payment gateway has a problem it is usually when you have the patience for automated responses or tickets that disappear. When you are evaluating a payment gateway you should test their support before you sign up. Call them. See how long it takes to get help. If it is slow now imagine how it will be after you have signed up.

Following the rules is not optional

Compliance with PCI DSS and RBI rules may seem like boring things to check but they are important. If something goes wrong like a data breach or a customer dispute, a payment gateway that's compliant will protect you and your customers. You should ask the payment gateway for their compliance certificates of just taking their word for it.

So where does PayG fit into this?

We built PayG because we kept hearing the complaints from merchants who had switched payment gateways two or three times already. They were looking for something that just worked. No waiting four days for settlement no surprises in the pricing and no generic dashboard.

We support UPI, including Autopay, cards, net banking and wallets with same-day settlement and a dashboard that is built for businesses. We have features like fee collection cycles for schools, recurring billing for subscriptions and split payments, for marketplaces.

We are not saying we are the option but if you have had any of the problems we mentioned it might be worth talking to us for 15 minutes before you commit to a payment gateway.

If you are thinking about switching your payment gateway or setting one up for the time you can reach out to our team at payg.in. We will walk you through how settlement, pricing and integration would work for your specific business without any generic sales pitch.