Three payment gateways, one Flutter app, real money moved. Which one should an Indian app actually integrate in 2026?
In 2021 I integrated Stripe for a SaaS product whose users were mostly in the US. It was smooth, the SDK was mature, and I did not think twice. A year later, the same company launched an Indian consumer app, and the CTO asked me to "just add Razorpay." I learned the hard way that a payment gateway is not a drop-in component: the answer depends on where your users pay, how they pay, and who your merchant account is with. What works for a US subscription service is a bad fit for a UPI-first Indian consumer base.
That experience cost me two failed integrations and one painful migration before I settled on a decision process. This article is that process applied to the three gateways every Flutter developer in India actually evaluates: Stripe, Razorpay, and Cashfree. I am going to score them on the criteria that matter when real money moves, then give you a decision rule you can apply to your own app. I have shipped all three, and I am going to be honest about where each one hurts.
The Criteria That Actually Matter
Marketing pages all sound the same. These are the criteria I use, in the order I weight them:
