Razorpay — Overview

Every application that takes money needs a payment gateway. Building one yourself — handling card data, banking integrations, UPI rails, PCI compliance — would take years and cost crores. Razorpay handles all of that and charges 2% per transaction.

This section walks you through setting up Razorpay, understanding Test Mode, securing your API keys, and wiring up the full payment flow that EduTrack uses.

---

The "Why First" Scenario

Your school management app is working. A parent selects the fee they need to pay and reaches the checkout screen.

Now what?

If you collect cash at the school office, you have no upfront commitment — parents delay, the admin team makes repeated follow-up calls. You need the parent to pay online at the time of fee submission.

You could build payment processing yourself:

• Apply to each bank individually for a merchant account
• Handle raw card data (triggers PCI DSS compliance — a 300-point security audit)
• Integrate with UPI rails separately (NPCI certification required)
• Build fraud detection
• Handle refunds, chargebacks, disputes
• Integrate net banking for 50+ Indian banks

That is a multi-year project requiring a dedicated payments team.

Razorpay handles every bit of that. You spend two days setting it up. They take 2% per transaction. Every rupee of that 2% buys you:

• UPI (GPay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM, BHIM UPI)
• Credit and debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Rupay, Amex)
• Net banking (all major Indian banks)
• EMI (no-cost EMI, bank EMI, cardless EMI)
• Digital wallets (Paytm Wallet, Amazon Pay, FreeCharge)
• International cards (with FEMA compliance handled)
• Fraud detection and PCI DSS compliance
• Dispute management and chargeback handling

The economic logic is simple: 2% is what you pay to not build a fintech company.

---

The CA Analogy

You already understand this model from your accounting work.

Think of Razorpay exactly like the payment gateway your CA firm's billing software uses when a client pays online. Money flows from the client's account → through the gateway → to the firm's bank account. The gateway takes a small cut for the service. The firm gets the rest, net of the commission, in a settlement cycle.

Razorpay is that gateway for your application. The settlement cycle is T+3 business days — just like a card payment at a physical store. The commission is 2% + GST on the 2%.

---

Payment Methods Razorpay Supports

For EduTrack's customer base (urban, 25–45 age group), UPI will be 60–70% of all transactions based on Indian market data. Razorpay's UPI support is critical.

---

How Razorpay Fits in the Architecture

Notice what the React app (frontend) never touches: the Key Secret. The Key Secret is used only inside Edge Functions — server-side code that runs in Supabase's secure environment. The customer's browser has no access to it.

---

Razorpay's Pricing (What the Client Pays For)

Understanding the cost structure matters when you are presenting this to a client:

No monthly fees. No setup fees. No minimum transaction volume. You only pay when you make money. This is the right model for early-stage products.

Settlement: Razorpay settles to your bank account every business day for transactions that are T+3 days old. If a customer pays on Monday, the money reaches your bank account on Thursday (assuming no weekends or bank holidays in between).

---

The Paise Trap — Read This Now

Every amount in Razorpay's API is specified in paise, not rupees.

₹1 = 100 paise

This is consistent with how payment APIs work globally (Stripe uses cents, Razorpay uses paise). The reason is that floating-point arithmetic in computers is unreliable for money — integers are exact. 29900 is always exactly ₹299. 299.00 as a float can introduce rounding errors.

---

What You Will Have After This Section

---

Time Required

Total: approximately 2 hours for first-time setup. After the first project, setup takes 20 minutes.