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India is the clearest example of a national instant rail replacing cards online. UPI, run by the National Payments Corporation of India since 2016, carries most of the country’s digital payments by count: a payer confirms in their bank’s or a wallet’s app, the money moves in seconds, and there is no card to decline. A checkout for Indian payers is designed around UPI and adds cards, wallets and net banking for the cases UPI does not cover.
The methods, and what each is for
| Method | Where it is used | How the payer pays | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| UPI | Most online payments by count | Scans a QR code or approves an intent in a UPI app | Instant; limits per transaction set by the bank and NPCI |
| UPI mandates | Subscriptions and instalments | Approves a mandate once; charges run on schedule | The recurring rail for India |
| Cards | Larger purchases, international payers | Enters the card; tokenisation rules apply | RuPay next to Visa and Mastercard; 3-D Secure |
| Wallets (Paytm and others) | Payers with a balance | Pays from the wallet | Smaller share than before UPI |
| Net banking | Older flow, still used for large amounts | Logs in to the bank’s site | Slower; a fallback |
| IMPS and UPI payouts | Refunds, seller settlements, withdrawals | Receives to a bank account or a UPI ID | Instant |
What the checkout needs
- UPI first, in two flows: a QR code for desktop and a one-tap intent flow on mobile that opens the payer’s UPI app with the amount filled in.
- UPI mandates for subscriptions: the payer approves once and the merchant charges on schedule within the mandate.
- Cards for larger purchases and international payers, with the local tokenisation rules and 3-D Secure.
- Wallets such as Paytm for payers who keep a balance.
- IMPS and UPI for payouts: refunds, seller settlements and withdrawals to any bank account or UPI ID.
UPI in detail
On desktop the checkout shows a QR code that the payer scans with any UPI app; on mobile it shows the apps installed on the device, and a tap opens the chosen one with the amount, the payee and the reference filled in, so the payer only confirms with a PIN. The confirmation reaches the provider within seconds; a payment the payer did not confirm expires and the checkout offers the next method. The limits per transaction are set by the payer’s bank within NPCI’s rules, so a large purchase may need a card or net banking as the second option. For subscriptions, a UPI mandate replaces the card token: the payer approves the amount, the frequency and the period once, and the merchant’s charges run within them with a notification before each debit.
Cards and tokenisation
India requires card numbers to be tokenised for storage by anyone other than the issuer and the schemes, so a stored card on a checkout is a token from the scheme or the issuer, obtained with the payer’s consent; the vault keeps that token like any other. RuPay is the domestic scheme next to Visa and Mastercard, and a local acquirer accepts all three; 3-D Secure is the rule for online card payments. International cards are a small share and decline more often; a route that keeps them on an acquirer that handles cross-border traffic recovers some of that.
What breaks without orchestration
- One provider’s UPI goes down at a peak hour and the checkout has nothing to fall back to.
- A payer’s bank has a known outage and the payment is retried on the same route.
- Payouts queue behind a single provider’s limits.
- A subscription’s mandate sits with one provider, and a change of provider means every payer approves again.
A route group of two providers, Razorpay and PhonePe for example, with a cascade on provider errors, keeps the method alive when one side fails; the back office shows which provider approved what, and the limits per terminal keep each provider within its contract.
Payouts
Sellers, drivers, creators and partners are paid to a bank account by IMPS or to a UPI ID, in seconds, from the client’s balance at the provider; the file upload in the back office validates the identifiers before sending and reports the returned ones with the reason. For a marketplace with thousands of sellers, the payout schedule per seller and the ledger per seller are what make the month close without spreadsheets.
Who holds the licence
The aggregators in the Tranzify catalogue, such as Razorpay, are payment aggregators authorised by the Reserve Bank of India; a client contracts with them under its own licence and enters the accounts in its terminals. Tranzify supplies the software, routes and journals; it never holds the funds and does not onboard merchants.
Beyond India
The same checkout design applies to other markets with a national instant rail: PIX in Brazil, PromptPay in Thailand, Kaspi Pay in Kazakhstan. The country pages describe each, and the catalogue lists the providers; the UPI method page describes the flows and the mandates step by step.
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