How do small sellers accept online payments for orders in India?
By the Gritticon team · Updated · 5 min read
Small sellers usually start with cash on delivery or UPI transfers, then add a payment gateway once orders are steady. A gateway account takes business verification, so start taking orders first. With Gritticon OMS, cash on delivery works immediately, and online payments go to your own Razorpay account when you connect it.
Three ways sellers get paid
- Cash on delivery: the customer pays when the order arrives or when they collect it. No setup, but you handle the cash.
- UPI to your own number or QR code: instant and familiar, but each payment has to be matched to an order by hand.
- A payment gateway: the customer pays during checkout and the payment is tied to the order automatically.
The trouble with manual UPI
Asking customers to pay to your UPI ID works while orders are few. As they grow, you spend time matching payment screenshots and bank alerts to orders, chasing payments that never came, and checking amounts that do not quite match. A missed match is either an order you shipped without payment or a customer you asked to pay twice.
What a payment gateway adds
A gateway takes the payment inside your checkout, in the customer’s choice of UPI, card or net banking, and reports it against the order. You no longer read screenshots; the order shows whether it is paid. The money settles into your bank account on the gateway’s schedule, and the gateway charges its own fee for the service.
What it takes to get a gateway
Payment companies have to verify who they are paying. Expect to provide business and identity documents and a bank account, and to wait while they are checked. That is why it rarely makes sense to make online payment the first step: you can be taking orders long before the verification is done.
Start with orders, add payments later
Take your first orders on cash on delivery or collection. Once orders are routine and customers ask to pay online, the paperwork is worth it. Your customers keep the option of cash either way.
A useful test: when you notice you are spending more time matching payments than packing orders, or customers start asking for a payment link before they order, it is time. Until then, every hour spent on payment paperwork is an hour not spent on the orders themselves.
Questions to ask before you choose a gateway
- Which payment methods your customers can use: UPI, cards, net banking.
- How long money takes to reach your bank account after a payment.
- What the gateway charges per payment, and whether the charge differs by method.
- What documents verification needs, and roughly how long it takes.
- How refunds work, and whether you can start one yourself.
- Whether the account is in your own business name, so the money and the records are yours.
Keep refunds and records simple
Whatever you choose, decide your refund rule before the first online payment: when you refund, how much, and how quickly. Write it where customers can read it. Keep one place where every order shows how it was paid, so that when a customer asks about a payment you can answer from a record rather than from memory or a screenshot.
How Gritticon OMS handles payments
In Gritticon OMS, cash on delivery works from the first order with no setup, and publishing your shop never waits for a payment company. When you are ready, you connect your own Razorpay account from the payments screen and finish on Razorpay’s own pages. Online payments then go to your Razorpay account; Gritticon OMS does not hold your money and takes no cut of any order.
Customers need no account and no app to pay: they give their details, choose delivery or collection, and then choose how to pay at checkout.