If you're integrating a shopping cart in your website, there are several options available. Depending on your requirements, some are cheaper than others. In this article, let's compare top 3 shopping carts - Stripe Checkout, PayPal, and Razorpay. We will see their pros and cons, pricing model, and compare their features side by side.
✅ What shopping cart really means on a custom website
On a custom site, you typically split ecommerce into two layers
Cart layer: This is your UI and logic that collects items, quantity, shipping, coupon, and totals
Checkout layer: This is where payments happen securely, with fraud checks, receipts, and compliance handled by a provider
Stripe Checkout, PayPal Checkout, and Razorpay Checkout all cover the checkout layer. You can implement a lightweight cart yourself and hand off payment to one of these providers.
🌍 Region support: what works and what does not
Here is the clean way to think about it
Merchant availability: Where you can open an account and receive settlements
Buyer reach: Where your customers can pay from
Stripe support reality
Stripe is supported for businesses in a specific list of countries and regions, and once you are supported you can sell to customers globally.
If your business can open a Stripe account in a supported region, you can charge customers worldwide, but your feature set and settlement options depend on your account country and local rules. Stripe pricing is transparent and published for online card payments.
PayPal support reality
PayPal is available in 200 plus countries and regions, so buyer reach is massive. PayPal India states that it supports international payments, which is a key constraint for certain domestic use cases.
Razorpay support reality
Razorpay is heavily India centered for merchant onboarding, and it also provides international payments capability to accept foreign cards and currencies, which is especially useful when you want settlement in INR for cross border sales. Razorpay also has a US pricing page, which indicates a separate offering for that market.
Razorpay is often strongest when your operational core is India, especially for Indian payment rails, while Stripe is usually the cleanest developer first global default when you want one modern integration for worldwide cards and wallets.
🧠 My recommendation for your exact case
Best default stack
✅ Stripe Checkout as primary checkout
✅ Add PayPal as a secondary option if your audience expects it
✅ Use Razorpay when India payment methods and INR settlement are the priority
Stripe Checkout is designed to be low code. You create a Checkout Session and use webhooks for fulfillment using checkout.session.completed.
🧩 How Stripe Checkout works
Step 1 Create a Checkout Session on your server
A Checkout Session represents the customer payment session for one time purchases or subscriptions.
Step 2 Redirect the customer to Stripe hosted checkout
Stripe handles the payment UI, wallets, fraud signals, and compliance.
Step 3 Fulfill the order with a webhook
Stripe explicitly recommends fulfillment via webhook after the transaction, using checkout.session.completed.
💰 Cost section: real examples you can copy into your pricing model
Stripe online card fees
Stripe publishes online card pricing as
2.9% plus 30 cents for domestic cards + 1.5% for international cards, + 1% if currency conversion is required
Example A US customer pays 100 dollars using a domestic card
Fee = 2.9 dollars + 0.30 dollars Total fee = 3.20 dollars Net to you = 96.80 dollars
Example B India customer pays 100 dollars using an international card and currency conversion applies
Base domestic fee = 2.9 percent + 0.30 International add on = 1.5 percent Currency conversion add on = 1 percent
Approx fee percent = 5.4 percent plus 0.30 Fee ≈ 5.40 + 0.30 = 5.70 dollars Net to you ≈ 94.30 dollars
This is why many teams price India separately in INR to reduce conversion costs.
PayPal US checkout fees
PayPal publishes a US business fee table showing PayPal Checkout at 3.49 percent plus a fixed fee.
Example US customer pays 100 dollars via PayPal Checkout
Fee ≈ 3.49 dollars + fixed fee Net ≈ 96.51 dollars minus fixed fee
Join the conversation! Your thoughts help the community grow.