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Shopify for India: What International Brands Need to Set Up Before They Launch
Most Shopify setups are built for Western markets. Here's a practical checklist of what to configure before you go live for Indian consumers.
Posted at
Feb 14, 2026
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Shopify is the platform of choice for most D2C brands entering India. It works well but the default setup optimised for US and European markets needs meaningful configuration before it is ready for Indian consumers.
Payment Gateway Configuration
Shopify Payments is not available for Indian merchants. You need a third-party payment gateway — Razorpay, PayU, or Cashfree are the most commonly used. More importantly UPI should appear as the first most prominent payment option since UPI accounts for 60%+ of Indian digital payments. If you do not have UPI as a one-tap payment option you are losing conversions to payment friction before customers complete the order.
Cash on Delivery
COD is not optional for most Indian D2C categories. In fashion, health supplements, home goods, and accessories COD orders represent 40-55% of total volume. Enable COD via your payment gateway and display it prominently in checkout alongside UPI and credit card options. The mitigation for COD's RTO risk is a WhatsApp confirmation flow that triggers within 30 minutes of a COD order being placed.
Mobile Checkout Optimisation
90%+ of Indian D2C traffic is mobile. Enable Shop Pay for one-tap checkout for returning users. Reduce form fields by removing company name and making apartment floor optional. Test on a mid-range Android device — most Indian consumers are not on iPhones and a checkout that is smooth on an iPhone 14 may be slow on a Redmi Note 11.
Indian Address Fields
Standard Shopify address forms are built for US postal conventions. Indian addresses need PIN code validation in real time. Auto-fill city and state from PIN code so customers do not enter mismatched data. Wrong or incomplete address data is a direct cause of RTO.
WhatsApp Integration
Connect your Shopify store to a WhatsApp Business API provider before launch. The flows to set up first are order confirmation, COD confirmation, and abandoned cart recovery. Set this up before you start driving traffic — not after you have thousands of orders and are trying to retrofit it.
