Thursday, January 3, 2008

Payment Gateways in India - Review/Research

I had done some research on Payment Gateways in India to switch our services from the current r. I called lot of gateways and tried to negotiate by comparing other offers etc. Here is a list of the rates /offers I got . I am posting it here just to add more content about Payment Gateways in India- Cards they accept, pricing etc. I also came across this blog where these issues are discussed . You could post your questions here , i will be happy to share whatever I know about.

Mastercard discontinued their processing with third party payment gateway providers. The way they offer Mastercard now is through UTI/Axis Bank . For this, you should have a current account with Axis Bank and get their approval. Lot of people complained that getting this set-up done is quite inconvenient.

Google checkout is expected to launch in India early 2008 . This might lead to a consolidation/standardization of payment gateway services in India.

PayPal is a good options for people receive payments from US/Europe. Now PayPal could directly transfer funds to an Indian Bank account and if the amount is above Rs.7000, transfer is free. This way you could avoid the Mastercard problem as well.

In India, I thought CCAvenue is a good option as it covers a lot of Online Banking service and credit cards . The only worry for me is that I will be lot in the crowd ( Got a feel when i called them). If you are looking for an economical option without compromising the features , you should check out Paysignet.com but I have no information about their quality of service.

Once you shortlist a gateway, make sure you call them a couple of times with questions. Support is important when you have issues and a lot of times calling them would reveal what service to hope for when you have a problem. I never short-listed someone who does not have a number to call in the website.


Payment Gateway in India- Features and Rates:
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CCAvenue:
Instruments: Visa, Amex, Diners & Mastercard (UTI account needed with set-up) and max number of online banks. Also PayMate, ITZ Cash Cards.
Set-up : 7.5K
Transaction Discount - 7%, 4% for online banking.
Annual Charges: 2k/yr.

Eazy2Pay:
Instruments: Visa,Mastercard (UTI account needed with set-up)Set-up : 10K
Transaction Discount - 5%
Annual Charges: None

Epayments.in:
Instruments: Visa,Mastercard (UTI account needed with set-up)
Set-up : 7K
Rental : 1K/yr
Transaction Discount - 7%
Annual Charges: Rs. 1.8K/yr

EBS/UTI:
Instrumnets: Mastercard , Visa
Set-up fee 10k
transaction discount - 5%
Annual Charges: 2.4k

Payseal ICICI:
Instrumnets: Visa
Set-up fee 30k
transaction discount - 3%
Annual Charges: None

ABCPayments:
Instrumnets: Visa, Diners,some major Indian banks Online Banking
Set-up fee 10k
transaction discount - 7%
Annual Charges: None

Trillionpay.in:
Instrumnets: Visa,Mastercard (UTI account needed with set-up)
Set-up fee 30k
transaction discount - 5%
Annual Charges: None

Paysignet:
Instrumnets: Visa,Mastercard (UTI account needed with set-up), Diners, JCB, some major Banks for online banking.
Set-up fee 6k
transaction discount - 5%
Annual Charges: 1.5k

PayPal:
Instruments: All international, Visa, Master, Discover, Amex and all kinds of electronic checks and bank transfers.
Set-up fee : Nil
transaction discount - 3.4%
Annual Charges: Nil
Other features:Direct Deposit to Indian Banks possible and there is no fee if the amount is 7k or more.

Issues: Does not support INR so the amount should be converted to USD before passing on to Paypal. Customer bank may charge a higher exchange rate to the
customer so customer may end up paying slightly higher price than what they bought from us.


I found out that many people use Paypal in combination with a gateway. That way they could get a wide instrument coverage. I also decided to do the same at the end.