The PayU question rarely comes from a first-time store. It arrives when a business has outgrown a startup gateway: more currencies, a finance team that wants tighter settlement reporting, or a procurement process that expects an enterprise agreement.
Where the two sit
Razorpay behaves like a product company: self-serve onboarding, a large API surface, and add-ons for subscriptions, payouts and invoicing. PayU behaves more like a merchant acquirer: an account manager, an underwriting process, negotiated pricing and enterprise configuration.
Neither is better in the abstract. The right one depends on whether you want to configure your way forward or talk to an account team.
What differs in practice
| PayU | Razorpay | |
|---|---|---|
| Onboarding | Documented process with underwriting | Mostly self-serve, faster to first transaction |
| Pricing | Negotiated by volume | Published tiers, negotiable at scale |
| Multi-currency | Strong, with settlement reporting | Supported, historically more domestic-first |
| BNPL and EMI | Established, with partner integrations | Available through partner integrations |
| Payouts | Available, often through a separate product | Available as a separate product |
| Support model | Account manager plus support | Dashboard-first support with escalation |
The row that changes a project is onboarding. A PayU account can take longer to approve, and the integration cannot go live until it does. Starting the application on day one is the cheapest schedule saving available.
Multi-currency is a settlement problem
Accepting an international card is straightforward. Explaining the settlement is not. The customer pays in one currency, the provider converts, fees are deducted, and the bank receives a different number on a different date.
Your ledger needs all three figures: what the customer paid, what the gateway settled, and what arrived. Refunds across currencies make the gap more visible, because the refunded amount and the settled amount rarely match exactly.
If finance cannot answer “what did this order actually earn”, the integration is not finished, whatever the checkout does.
Mandates and migration
Businesses moving from a startup gateway often have live subscriptions. Moving those mandates depends on what the current provider exposes and whether consent records are complete.
It is worth treating mandate migration as its own project: export what exists, identify what cannot move, decide whether customers must re-authorise, and communicate before the switch. Attempting it inside a checkout migration is how subscription revenue drops silently.
Integration effort
The core checkout work is comparable: order creation, hosted page, verified return, webhook with signature checks, refunds. The divergence is in three areas:
- Currency and settlement configuration, which needs testing per currency rather than once.
- BNPL or EMI states, which add approval outcomes the application must display.
- Onboarding coordination, which is calendar time rather than engineering time.
Our standard collection scope starts at Rs 4,999 either way. Multi-currency settlement and migration are separate modules, priced on PayU integration cost and Razorpay integration cost.
When PayU fits better
- An enterprise agreement and negotiated pricing are expected.
- Multiple currencies with formal settlement reporting are required.
- Procurement wants an account manager and a named escalation path.
- BNPL or EMI is a meaningful share of checkout and needs partner support.
When Razorpay fits better
- The team wants to start this week and configure without a sales cycle.
- Subscriptions, payment links and invoicing are part of the product.
- The stack is developer-led and documentation quality matters more than an account manager.
- Domestic payments dominate and international is occasional.
The migration question
Moving between these two is not a code swap. Signature verification, event names, settlement formats and mandate handling all differ, and the reconciliation import has to be rewritten.
Plan it as a parallel run: keep the old gateway live for a defined period, route a small share of traffic to the new one, compare settlement reports, then switch. That is slower than a cutover and far cheaper than discovering a reconciliation gap a month later.
The delivery scope for either gateway is on payment gateway integration. If the choice is still open across more providers, the gateway comparison covers Cashfree, Paytm, PhonePe and Instamojo on the same criteria.
