Shopify transaction fees in India 2026: 2%, 1%, 0.6% or 0.2% plus your gateway

Shopify charges Indian stores a transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, on every prepaid order paid through a gateway like Razorpay or PayU. Shopify Payments is not available in India, so there's no way to switch this fee off, and your gateway's own fee (commonly 2% + 18% GST) comes on top. Cash on Delivery orders are the exception: Shopify charges no transaction fee on manual payments.

These rates are from Shopify's India pricing page, checked on 5 October 2026. I keep the live fee table on Shopify pricing in India, so check there if you're reading this months later.

I'm a senior Shopify developer based in Delhi, and I set up payments and checkout for D2C brands selling in India and abroad. This is one of the most misunderstood lines on a Shopify store's P&L: merchants confuse Shopify's fee with the gateway's fee, forget GST entirely, and then wonder why their payment costs are higher than the plan page implied. Let me untangle it with rupee examples you can run against your own numbers.

What exactly is a "Shopify transaction fee" in India?

Two separate charges hide under this phrase, and mixing them up is where every miscalculation starts.

1. Shopify's third-party payment provider fee. Shopify's own cut, charged when a payment goes through an outside gateway (Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree, PhonePe PG, CCAvenue and the like). It's a percentage of the order total. In countries where Shopify Payments exists, merchants can avoid it. India isn't one of them: Shopify's supported-countries list doesn't include India, so every prepaid order on an Indian store pays it.

2. The gateway's processing fee. What the gateway charges to move money. Razorpay's and PayU's standard pricing pages list 2% for domestic cards, netbanking and wallets, 3% or "up to 3%" for international cards, and 18% GST on the fee. You pay it on every prepaid order.

So on an Indian store, a prepaid order pays both, separately. That stacking is the story of this post.

Shopify transaction fees by plan (India, 2026)

Grow is the plan Shopify used to call "Shopify." The fee falls as you climb plans, which is Shopify's incentive to move you up as prepaid volume grows. I break down the full plan structure in Shopify pricing plans in India (2026).

Does Shopify charge a fee on COD orders?

No. Shopify's Help Center on manual payments says: "You aren't charged third-party transaction fees for manual payments." Cash on Delivery, set up as Shopify's built-in manual payment method, is a manual payment.

That matters for Indian stores more than anywhere else, because COD is often a large share of orders. A store doing ₹10 lakh a month with half its orders on COD only pays Shopify's fee on the ₹5 lakh of prepaid sales.

COD is still not free. Your courier charges for collecting cash, undelivered COD parcels come back as RTO with shipping paid both ways, and the money sits with the courier for days. Those costs often exceed a card fee. I cover the COD side in Shopify Payments, COD and GST in India.

Which gateway fee comes on top, and how does UPI fit in?

All Indian gateways price close to each other on their standard plans. From their own pricing pages in October 2026:

Promotional rates exist. Cashfree advertises zero platform fees for new merchants up to ₹20 lakh of sales until 31 March 2027, and PayU ran a "lifetime 1.9%" Shopify offer that closed on 30 June 2026. Read the current page before signing.

UPI is changing this month. NPCI's FAQ dated 15 September 2026 sets a 0.4% MDR on person-to-merchant UPI payments above ₹2,000, capped at ₹300 per payment, effective 15 October 2026. Payments up to ₹2,000 stay at zero MDR. Separately, Razorpay's standard page lists UPI as "Zero MDR, 2% platform fee applies." How each gateway prices UPI after 15 October depends on your contract, so ask yours in writing. I compare the gateways in detail in Shopify payment gateways in India.

Don't forget GST: it's on the fee, not the sale

In India, gateways charge 18% GST on their fees. A gateway advertising 2% really costs 2% × 1.18 = 2.36%. On a ₹2,000 order that's ₹40 of fee plus ₹7.20 of GST, ₹47.20 in total. GST is charged on the fee, not on your order value; your order handles its own GST separately.

Shopify's fee is billed on your Shopify invoice. Shopify's Help Center says stores located in India are charged GST on their Shopify fees unless they submit a GSTIN, and that exemption only applies to invoices issued after you submit it. Check your own bill.

If you're GST-registered you can usually claim this GST as input tax credit, which softens the real cost. For cash-flow and pricing decisions, still model the GST-inclusive rate. I've seen margin plans built on the sticker number come apart at volume.

Worked example: what you actually pay per order

One ₹2,000 prepaid order (UPI or domestic card), gateway at 2% + 18% GST = 2.36%:

Now scale it. Say you do ₹10 lakh a month of prepaid sales, and add the subscription so you see the whole bill (monthly billing):

At ₹10 lakh of prepaid sales, Grow is the cheapest of the three and Advanced is the most expensive by a wide margin. The lower fee doesn't come close to covering Advanced's price at this volume.

When does upgrading a plan actually pay for itself?

Only when the fee saving on prepaid sales beats the subscription jump. COD sales don't count, because they pay no Shopify fee.

Below about ₹5.45 lakh a month of prepaid sales on monthly billing, Basic is cheaper. Above it, Grow starts saving you money net of its higher price. The trap I see most often is brands counting total revenue, COD included, and upgrading too early. Check how much of your revenue actually runs through the gateway.

How to reduce the transaction-fee bite in India

Here's the playbook, in the order I'd work through it with a client:

• Upgrade plans at the prepaid crossover, not before. Use the table above with your prepaid number, not total revenue.
• Switch to yearly billing. It lowers the Basic → Grow break-even to about ₹4.1 lakh of prepaid sales and saves about 25% on the plan itself.
• Negotiate your gateway rate at volume. Gateway rates aren't fixed. Once you're doing meaningful monthly volume, ask for a lower rate. Even 0.2% off compounds at scale.
• Watch the UPI change. Ask your gateway how UPI payments above ₹2,000 are priced from 15 October 2026, and check your average order value against that threshold.
• Keep COD lean. COD skips Shopify's fee, but courier charges, RTO losses and cash locked in transit often cost more than a card fee. If COD returns are bleeding margin, that's usually a checkout and trust problem; I cover related fixes in why your Shopify store isn't converting.
• Reconcile monthly. Pull actual payment costs from both Shopify and your gateway and compare them to what you expected. Discrepancies are common and quietly eat margin.

The reason brands overpay isn't that the levers are hidden. They never sit down and model their real order mix against the fee structure. An hour with your actual numbers usually finds the leak.

The number most brands miss: blended effective rate

Stop thinking in single percentages. Your true payment cost is a blended effective rate across your whole order mix: some UPI, some cards, some COD, some international, each at a different cost. A brand with 60% COD and 40% prepaid pays Shopify's fee on far less revenue than one running 90% prepaid, even on the same plan and gateway.

The mistake is optimising the plan while ignoring the mix. Your payment cost responds to how customers pay far more than to which Shopify tier you're on. That's also why I never quote a store's payment cost from the plan page alone. I ask for the order mix first, because that's what decides the invoice.

What I'd do

For a typical Indian D2C store, I'd stay on Basic until prepaid sales hold above ₹4–5 lakh a month, switch to yearly billing as soon as the store is stable, and pick the gateway on UPI success rate and settlement speed rather than a 0.05% rate difference. Then I'd put the effort where the money actually leaks: COD confirmation and RTO.

What's next

For the live fee table, plan prices and GST notes, see Shopify pricing in India. It's the page I keep current.

If you want the payment stack set up right (the right gateway, UPI and COD tuned for your real order mix, and the fee structure modelled against your actual revenue), that's the kind of work I do for D2C brands. My Shopify developer rates for India show what a payments-and-checkout engagement costs; a focused setup or fix sits in the ₹40,000–₹1,50,000 range. Then tell me about your store on the intake form: your monthly revenue, your COD/prepaid split and which gateway you're on, and I'll tell you where your payment costs are leaking.

Related reads

• Shopify pricing plans in India (2026): the subscription side of the ledger, per tier.
• Shopify payment gateways in India: Razorpay vs PayU vs Cashfree, UPI and settlement.
• Shopify Payments, COD and GST in India: the deeper plumbing on gateways, COD and tax.
• Why your Shopify store isn't converting: where checkout and COD trust issues quietly cost you orders.

Sources

• Shopify — India pricing and plans
• Shopify Help Center — Shopify Payments supported countries
• Shopify Help Center — manual payments
• Shopify Help Center — billing taxes in India
• Razorpay — payment gateway pricing
• PayU — pricing
• Cashfree — payment gateway charges
• NPCI — FAQs on MDR on select UPI (P2M) transactions, 15 Sept 2026