Razorpay Payment Links as a Digital Commerce Enablement Tool
Industry & Competitive Context
Razorpay, founded in 2014, provides technology that lets businesses accept and process online payments through cards, net banking, UPI and wallets. Reuters reports that it earns revenue by charging merchants. Reuters-based reporting names Paytm, PhonePe, Cashfree and BillDesk as its competitors in digital payments.
India’s payments infrastructure is a rapidly expanding market. NPCI data reported in November 2026 show UPI processed 25.47 billion transactions worth ₹31.53 lakh crore in October 2026. The market is also crowded. A Business Standard report from July 2026 describes a thin-margin business with more than 50 payment-processing players, including PayU, Razorpay, BillDesk and PhonePe. In that article, Cashfree’s co-founder said switching between providers is easy because integration times have fallen from months to minutes. Cashfree was waiving gateway fees on the first ₹20 lakh of GMV for new merchants, which he described as marketing spend.
Payment links are not unique to Razorpay. PayU’s official blog describes a payment link as a URL-based way to collect payments without a website or app, shareable through social platforms, SMS or email and creatable singly or in bulk. The category was contested from the outset, and its features are comparable across providers.
Analysis: The documented competitive picture suggests a product like Payment Links is unlikely to be a durable feature advantage on its own. Its strategic value lies in what it does for merchant acquisition and platform breadth, which the following sections examine.
Brand Situation Prior to Launch
Razorpay introduced Payment Links in 2017. In July 2018 the company said the product had been available since September 2017. Its launch blog post is dated 15 November 2017.
The company’s own framing of the pre-launch problem is documented. The launch post says India’s digitisation created a need for simple digital payment means that would bring businesses of all sizes into the cashless economy. It singles out small merchants, entrepreneurs and home-based businesses that deal in cash and have no website or online store.
Strategic Objective
Razorpay’s stated objectives come from its own communications, not from any internal planning document.
At launch, the company positioned Payment Links as a way for businesses to start accepting online payments without investment in payment infrastructure. It described the product as suited to online and offline businesses alike.
In July 2018, co-founder and CTO Shashank Kumar described the product as a universal payment solution serving small and larger enterprises. He said new features were designed to drive digitisation in traditional businesses and offer new-age businesses ways to increase revenue.
The company also stated a quantitative ambition. It said more than 20,000 businesses were transacting through Payment Links since September 2017 and that it planned to double that figure within six months.
Analysis: The documented objective has two parts. The first is breadth, serving businesses with no digital presence as well as those with one. The second is adoption volume, expressed as a count of transacting businesses and not as revenue.
Campaign Architecture & Execution
Execution is documented through product design and product evolution.
Core mechanism. Razorpay’s documentation describes the product as letting businesses accept payments without a website or app. A link is generated from the Dashboard or through APIs and shared by email, SMS or social media. The launch post describes three steps: create the link, share it, and receive payment through Razorpay’s core platform and checkout, which supports cards, net banking, UPI and wallets.
Dual-path access. A business can use APIs to integrate links with an existing website or order system, or create them from the dashboard without integration. Documentation states that API integration allows a link to be created as soon as an order is created in a business’s order-management system. The same product therefore serves developer-led and non-technical merchants.
Feature evolution. The July 2018 upgrade added Partial Payments, which let end users pay in tranches, and Batch Uploads, which let businesses generate and process links in bulk. The report also says the upgrade automated accounting and reconciliation. Razorpay’s blog adds an extension for creating links without logging in to the dashboard. Current documentation lists expiry dates, webhook notifications and international currencies, plus an Address Verification System for international payments.
Documented use cases. Razorpay’s launch post lists small businesses without an app or website, cash-on-delivery and point-of-sale alternatives, abandoned-cart follow-up, chatbot-based selling and social-media businesses. It also presents a case example from Treebo, which it describes as India’s third-largest hotel chain. Treebo used links for advance and partial payments to address no-shows, and Razorpay says this reduced inventory loss and helped Treebo protect its topline. The post gives no quantified results for Treebo.
Product-line extension. In August 2020 Razorpay launched Payment Buttons, which it described as converting a payment gateway’s capabilities into a button requiring no developer support. Razorpay said it had spoken to more than 200 startups and freelancers during COVID-19 and found this community needed a payment solution that was easy to implement without technical expertise.
Geographic extension. Razorpay’s documentation lists Payment Links as available in India, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States.
Analysis: The documented design choices show a pattern. Razorpay reduced the technical prerequisite for accepting payment to a shareable URL and then layered features that move the product toward richer commerce workflows, such as instalments, bulk issuance and reconciliation.
Positioning & Consumer Insight
The “consumer” in this case is the merchant, and the end customer is a second audience.
Merchant insight, as stated by Razorpay. The documented insight is that cash-dealing small merchants without websites or apps still needed to collect payments as easily as online counterparts. Razorpay’s later communications extend this to lockdown conditions. A Razorpay blog post describes a freelancer who used links to receive payments via WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, accept partial payments and automate reminders, presented as a response to concerns about currency contamination. This is a company-published customer story. It is not independently verified.
End-customer insight, as stated by Razorpay. The launch post’s hotel example rests on the observation that customers who pay in advance are more likely to show up. This is Razorpay’s characterisation and is not supported by a cited study.
Positioning. The documented message is simplicity and universality, meaning payment acceptance “just a link away” for online and offline businesses. Razorpay’s 2020 annual report grouped Payment Links, Payment Pages and Smart Collect with Payment Buttons as a “no-code” movement. Its own phrasing for these tools is “no-code payment products”.
Analysis: The positioning places Payment Links as an on-ramp, a low-friction entry point into a broader platform. This reading is consistent with Razorpay’s own description of how it later grew beyond payments. Business Standard’s PTI report describes a platform spanning payment acceptance, banking, payouts, payroll, lending and other financial services. The sources do not state that Payment Links was designed as an on-ramp, so that is analytical inference from the documented positioning and not a documented strategy.
Media & Channel Strategy
The verifiable channels are largely product-led and owned.
Owned channels. The launch was communicated through Razorpay’s blog, authored by co-founder Shashank Kumar. Later features were communicated through press releases carried by outlets including Business Standard/ANI and Electronic Payments International. Razorpay also publishes industry reports on its blog, one of which names Payment Links among its top-growing products.
Distribution mechanism. The product itself is the channel through which links circulate. Documentation says links can be sent via email, SMS or social media. Razorpay’s blog says links are shareable via messenger, WhatsApp and other platforms.
Business & Brand Outcomes
The outcomes below are the only ones with public documentation. All are company-reported, and methodologies are not disclosed.
Adoption, 2017–2018. Razorpay said that by July 2018 more than 20,000 businesses were transacting through Payment Links.
Efficiency claim. Kumar said the upgraded product could save businesses up to 30% of cost and time. The underlying methodology is not published, so the figure is a claim and not a measured outcome.
Growth, 2020. In its 2020 review, Razorpay said Smart Collect, Payment Links and Payment Pages were the top products, each growing more than 5x in 2020 against 2019. It also said Payment Gateway’s share of transactions fell by five percentage points because of the growth of its no-code products. The report does not specify whether the 5x figure measures transactions, value or merchants. It also reports that transactions on the platform rose 80% in 2020, and that Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities contributed 55% of activity against 49% in 2019. These are platform-level figures, not Payment Links-specific.
Corporate outcomes (platform level). Reuters reported that Razorpay was valued at about $7.5 billion in its 2021 fundraise, when it raised $375 million. Reuters also reported that Razorpay confidentially filed draft IPO papers in June 2026. Business Standard, citing PTI and unnamed sources, reported on 4 November 2026 that SEBI had approved an IPO of ₹5,000–6,000 crore targeting a valuation of about $5 billion. Press reports of FY25 revenue differ, ranging from about ₹3,783 crore to about ₹3,900 crore.
Strategic Implications
The following is analysis built on the documented record.
First, simplicity can serve as a segmentation tool. Razorpay’s documented design lets one underlying payment stack serve merchants who need dashboard-only operation and those who integrate through APIs. The documented growth of no-code products in 2020, alongside a decline in the gateway’s share of transactions, shows that product mix on a platform can shift toward lower-friction entry products.
Second, features, not the link, carry differentiation. Since competitors such as PayU offer comparable link products, the documented differentiators are Razorpay’s feature additions such as partial payments and batch creation, and its integration with the rest of its platform. Whether these produced a measurable competitive edge is not publicly documented.
Third, the competitive environment pressures acquisition economics. The July 2026 report on fee waivers and easy switching indicates that merchants face low switching costs. In that setting, a product that gets a merchant transacting quickly has strategic value at acquisition. The sources do not show how Razorpay prices or monetises Payment Links relative to its wider platform.
Fourth, public evidence is thin where decisions are most consequential. The main gaps are unit economics, retention and attribution of growth to this product. Anyone drawing conclusions about the product’s return on investment should recognise that the public record cannot support them.
Discussion Questions
Razorpay’s July 2018 announcement set a target to double the transacting-business count within six months. What are the strategic benefits and risks of announcing adoption targets publicly, and what additional disclosure would you need to judge whether the product succeeded?
Competitors such as PayU offer comparable payment-link products. Based only on the documented evidence, where does a payment-link product create defensible advantage, and where does it risk commoditisation?
Razorpay reported that its no-code products grew faster than its payment gateway in 2020, reducing the gateway’s share of transactions. How should a platform company evaluate the trade-off between growing entry-level products and protecting its core product’s share?
Treebo’s use case is documented qualitatively but not quantitatively. How much weight should a manager give to a vendor-published customer story, and what independent evidence would you seek before replicating the approach?
Cashfree’s fee-waiver programme and the observation that switching is easy point to low merchant switching costs. Using the documented features of Payment Links, propose how Razorpay could deepen merchant lock-in. Which of your proposals rest on documented facts, and which rest on assumptions you would need to test?
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