PayU Review 2026

What is PayU?

Five lakh businesses, 150+ payment modes and a final RBI payment aggregator authorisation that arrived in May 2025, after a reapplication ordered in 2023: that is where PayU India sits in late 2026. For most founders the first question is cost, so here is the short version of PayU payment gateway charges India merchants see under the method groups on its public pricing page: about 2% plus GST on domestic Visa and Mastercard cards, net banking, wallets and BNPL, and about 3% plus GST on Amex, Diners, EMI and international cards. Third-party reviews also report no setup fee or annual maintenance charge. The rest of this page explains where those numbers bend, how long money takes to reach your bank, and when Razorpay or Cashfree make more sense.

PayU payment gateway charges India: the 2% and 3% slabs

PayU's pricing page splits payment methods into two buckets rather than listing a rate for every card type. The cheaper bucket covers Visa, Mastercard, Net Banking, BNPL and Wallets on domestic transactions. The costlier bucket covers Diners, American Express, EMI and international transactions. The page shows the percentages as graphics, not text, so the figures here are as reported by three 2026 write-ups (Techimply, checked August 2026; Xflow, September 2026; and Skydo), which all quote 2% and 3%, each plus 18% GST on the fee. Treat them as indicative until your agreement confirms them.

A quick worked example helps. On a ₹10,000 domestic card order, the fee is ₹200 and GST on it is ₹36, so you receive ₹9,764. The same order paid by an overseas card costs ₹300 plus ₹54 GST. Large merchants are pushed toward a custom plan with a dedicated account manager, and that is where real negotiation happens.

PayU payment gateway fees and TDR rates by payment method

TDR (transaction discount rate) is the industry term for the cut a gateway keeps. The table below collects what is published and what is not.

Hidden costs are mostly about foreign cards. PayU converts at the transaction-date exchange rate and does not publish the margin over mid-market, so a USD-heavy exporter should ask for that in writing. Chargeback handling and faster settlement also sit outside the headline rate.

PayU Money vs PayU Biz: what the old names mean now

Tutorials from 2016 to 2021 talk about two products. PayUmoney was the self-serve option for freelancers and small shops, with quick online signup and a narrower set of payment modes. PayU Biz (earlier called PayU Enterprise) was the full gateway for larger sites, with more banks, EMI tenures and custom routing. New merchants no longer pick between them. Signup now runs through a single onboarding flow at onboarding.payu.in, and every account lands on the same PayU dashboard with one key and salt pair. If an old WooCommerce guide asks for a "PayUmoney merchant ID", treat it as outdated and use the current plugin instead.

Activating a PayU account: PAN, bank and KYC in one sitting

According to docs.payu.in, activation starts from an "Activate Account" button on the Business Summary page. You verify the business PAN, choose a category, optionally add a GSTIN, enter expected monthly sales, link a bank account by account number and IFSC, then say whether you will collect on a website, an app or neither. That last choice matters: a business without a site can still go live on payment links, invoices and buttons.

KYC can be done three ways: cKYC (PayU fetches records after you enter a date of birth or incorporation), Aadhaar, or a manual document upload. Typical documents are an identity proof, an address proof and a GST certificate or business licence. The docs give no fixed approval time, so plan a few working days for a new company and keep your website's policy pages ready, since reviewers check them.

Checkout choices, from payment links to the Bolt script

Developers get more ways in than most Indian gateways offer:

• PayU Hosted Checkout: the customer is redirected to a PayU page. Least code, and the route PayU recommends inside WebViews.
• Checkout Plus: loads the bolt.min.js script and calls bolt.launch() so the buyer pays without leaving your page. Older blogs call this the PayU Bolt checkout.
• Merchant Hosted Checkout: your own payment form calling PayU APIs, which needs PCI scope planning for cards.
• Mobile SDKs for Android, iOS, React Native, Flutter and Cordova, plus the UPI Bolt SDK, which keeps UPI payments inside your app and ships with Flutter, React Native, Cordova and Ionic wrappers.
• CommercePro Checkout: the one-click checkout formerly documented as Checkout Express, with ready modules for WooCommerce and Magento.
• No-code tools: PayU payment links, payment buttons and invoices, all created from the dashboard.

Every request is signed with a SHA-512 hash built from your key, transaction fields and secret salt. Most integration bugs come from a field order mismatch in that hash, so copy the sequence from the "Generate Hash" page exactly.

Testing in sandbox before real money moves

PayU test mode uses a separate UAT environment with its own merchant key and salt. The docs publish dummy credit, debit and EMI cards, test UPI IDs such as anything@payu, net banking credentials and wallet numbers. Run a success, a failure and a refund in sandbox, then confirm your webhook endpoint updates order status before switching keys.

Using the PayU plugin for WooCommerce

The official "PayU India" plugin on wordpress.org is maintained by PayU itself, has 7,000+ active installs and was at version 3.9.1 in October 2026. Recent releases added block-based checkout support, an affordability widget, an Inquiry API check that double-confirms payment status, and refund status sync from the PayU dashboard. Setup is short: install the plugin, paste your key and salt under WooCommerce payment settings, pick test or live mode, and place a trial order. Shopify, Wix and other carts have their own plugins listed in the docs.

EMI, LazyPay and other ways customers split a bill

Affordability is where PayU has an edge for electronics, furniture and education sellers. PayU's EMI options cover credit card EMI, debit card EMI and cardless EMI through partner banks and lenders, with no-cost EMI campaigns run through its Offer Engine. On the BNPL side, PayU LazyPay is the group's own pay-later brand, operated through LazyPay Private Limited with bank and NBFC partners. Remember that EMI transactions fall in the 3% slab, so a no-cost EMI promotion costs you both the gateway fee and the interest subvention.

PayU payment gateway settlement time and Priority Settlements

PayU's own settlement guide gives the standard pattern: UPI and wallet money moves fastest, while cards, net banking and EMI follow a T+2 working day cycle, and third-party reviews quote T+2 business days as PayU's default. Weekends and bank holidays push that out.

Priority Settlements shortens the wait to anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours after a successful payment. Eligibility, per the docs, needs full KYC, at least 60 days of transaction history, low disputes and sound finances. The extra fee is shown as a percentage in the dashboard when you choose a cycle, under Track > Settlements. Split settlements are available for marketplaces that pay vendors from one checkout.

Accepting foreign cards with PayU international payments

International acceptance is off by default. You request it by emailing support or through your account manager after the account is live. PayU says you can accept payments in 130+ currencies with settlement in INR, and its DCC product lets an overseas buyer pay in their own currency. Expect extra scrutiny of your website, refund policy and product category, plus the 3% slab and an undisclosed conversion margin.

PayU vs Razorpay on price, product and developer feel

Headline pricing is close. Razorpay's own pricing page lists a standard 2% plus GST per transaction, zero setup fee, zero AMC and zero MDR on standard UPI and RuPay debit payments. That last line reflects the pre-October rule: under the government's new framework, only RuPay debit and UPI payments up to ₹2,000 stay free by law, so larger UPI payments to merchants may cost up to 0.4% on either gateway. Cashfree lists 1.95% as its standard domestic platform fee, 2.99% on international Visa and Mastercard and 1.5% to 2.50% on EMI and Pay Later, which makes it the cheaper of the three on paper for a small Indian store, especially if you sell on EMI.

Where they differ is texture. Razorpay's dashboard, docs and add-ons (Payroll, RazorpayX, Magic Checkout) feel more polished for startups. PayU is stronger on affordability, EMI depth and bank relationships, which is why large travel, education and electronics brands often route volume through it, sometimes alongside a second gateway. If you sell low-ticket items on UPI, the gap is small; if you sell ₹30,000 phones on EMI, PayU's affordability suite earns its fee.

Is PayU safe for your customers and your money?

PayU Payments Private Limited is an RBI-authorised online payment aggregator, part of Prosus (majority-owned by Naspers), and is PCI DSS certified, per PayU's own company summary. Card data handling follows RBI tokenisation rules through its Token Hub. For merchants, the practical risks are holds and reserves on new or high-risk accounts and slower support for small sellers than for key accounts. There is no public status page, though an API reports which payment modes are up.

When a customer says money left their account but the order failed, the bank usually sends that amount to PayU. Once reconciliation marks the payment failed, PayU starts an automatic refund (you may need support to switch this on). Refunds generally take 5 to 21 days depending on method, and some public sector bank net banking refunds run longer.

Three tests before you choose PayU

• Get your negotiated TDR, international conversion margin and Priority Settlement fee in writing before integrating.
• Build on Hosted Checkout or the WooCommerce plugin first; move to Checkout Plus or the custom flow once orders are flowing.
• If EMI or BNPL is not part of your sales pitch, compare Cashfree's and Razorpay's current offers, because PayU's real strength may go unused.