How to set up UPI on a Shopify store in India (and make it the default)

There is no 'UPI switch' inside Shopify. UPI arrives through whichever Indian payment gateway you connect — Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree, PhonePe — and how it shows up at checkout depends on the checkout you run. This guide covers the setup end to end: enabling it, surfacing it, rewarding it, and making sure the person paying is the person ordering.

Step 1 — enable UPI at the gateway

In your gateway dashboard, confirm UPI is active on your merchant account — intent (opens the shopper's UPI app directly), collect (a request sent to their UPI ID) and QR. Intent is the one that converts on mobile; collect is slower and worth keeping only as a fallback. Every major Indian gateway supports all three; if UPI is missing on your account, it is a KYC or activation step with them, not a Shopify setting.

Step 2 — connect the gateway to your checkout

On Shopify's native checkout, an Indian gateway appears as a third-party provider and UPI sits inside its hosted page, one tap further away than it should be. A checkout that orchestrates your own gateways can surface UPI as a first-class option on the payment screen itself — with your gateway still processing the money and settling directly to you. Either way, connect the gateway once and test a ₹1 transaction before going further.

Step 3 — put UPI first

• Order the payment list UPI → cards → netbanking → wallets → COD. Position is the single biggest lever on method mix.
• Show the UPI intent button as the primary action on mobile, with the QR for desktop.
• Pre-select UPI for returning shoppers who used it last time.
• Keep COD visible but last, priced honestly — hiding it drops conversion; ranking it last drops COD share.

Step 4 — reward it

A small, visible discount on UPI — 'extra ₹10 off' or a few percent — shown next to the COD option is the cheapest prepaid nudge there is, because a UPI order cannot be refused at the door. Lock the code to the UPI method so it cannot be used on COD, and let it auto-apply rather than asking shoppers to type it. Tiered prepaid discounts by cart value do the same job for bigger baskets.

Step 5 — verify the payer

UPI intent hands off to another app and returns; a checkout that has already verified the shopper's phone by OTP knows the payment belongs to the person who ordered, and can reconcile a delayed callback against the right cart. It also means a failed or abandoned UPI attempt is a recoverable person, not a lost session.

Step 6 — measure the shift

Track payment-method mix weekly. The number to move is prepaid share: what fraction of orders pay online. As UPI climbs, RTO falls with it, cash lands sooner, and ops gets quieter. The UPI-first checkout page shows what the full setup looks like running.