OPENSTAYS PAYMENTS
The 0% UPI Payment Gateway.
Every Rupee Stays Yours.
A UPI payment gateway with 0% fees lets your guests pay for their stay the way they already pay for everything else, scan, tap, done, while the money lands straight in your own bank account. No commission, no gateway charges, no settlement cycle, no middleman holding your revenue.
OpenStays builds this 0% UPI payment gateway into every booking, on your hosted listing page, on your website and inside WhatsApp conversations, so the booking and the payment happen together, not in two separate chats.
Why pay 2% to receive your own money?
Every rupee a guest pays you today probably passes through someone else’s hands first. An OTA keeps 15–20% before settling the rest weeks later. A card gateway keeps around 2% and settles the next working day. Even a “free” payment link often hides a fee on the property’s side. For a small property running on thin season margins, that’s a full month of profit quietly leaking away every year.
Meanwhile UPI, the rails behind Google Pay, PhonePe and every banking app in India, moves money from a guest’s account to yours instantly, and person-to-merchant UPI payments carry no charges for either side. The rails your guests already prefer are also the cheapest way you could possibly get paid.
OTAs and card gateways still have their place. But when a guest is already talking to you directly, why should their payment take the expensive route to reach you? In India, the obvious rail is UPI.
What most properties are missing isn’t the payment method, it’s the software around it: a checkout that quotes the right amount, shows your UPI details at exactly the right moment, records what was paid, and turns that payment into a confirmed booking. That wrapper is what OpenStays provides, and because the rails underneath are free, we can keep it a genuinely 0% UPI payment gateway: no per-transaction cut, ever.
SEE IT WORKING
Watch a real UPI checkout, start to finish
Two minutes, no narration needed. This is exactly what your guest sees when they book and pay you through the UPI payment gateway.
The guest picks dates and a room, reaches checkout, and is shown your UPI details for the exact amount due. They pay from whichever UPI app they already use, and the reservation lands in your dashboard as pending, ready for you to confirm once the money shows in your account. Nothing was typed twice, nobody took a cut on the way through, and the guest never had to dig through an old chat thread for your account details. There’s no card form either, no OTP, no redirect to a bank page where guests give up halfway.
UNDER THE HOOD
How the 0% UPI payment gateway works
Four steps, and OpenStays is never in the funds path at any of them.
01 · CHECKOUT
Your UPI details, at the right moment
When a guest confirms dates and a room, checkout shows your UPI ID for the exact amount due, full payment or the advance you configured. No “transfer to this number and send a screenshot” ritual, no ambiguity about how much to pay.
02 · PAYMENT
Any UPI app the guest already uses
Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM or their own banking app, the guest pays from whatever they trust, in seconds, on the phone already in their hand. Familiar payment, zero hesitation, fewer abandoned bookings at the last step.
03 · SETTLEMENT
Money in your account, instantly
UPI settles bank-to-bank in real time. There’s no escrow, no T+2 cycle, no minimum payout threshold, the advance for tonight’s booking is in your account before the guest has put their phone down. OpenStays never touches the money.
04 · CONFIRMATION
You verify, the calendar blocks
The reservation waits as pending in your dashboard. Check your bank alert for the credit, tap confirm, and the calendar blocks the room, the guest gets their confirmation and your records stay clean.
THE GUEST’S SIDE
Ninety seconds from room to receipt
Bookings are lost in the gap between “I’ll take it” and “payment received”. Every hour that gap stays open, the guest keeps browsing, and somebody else’s property is one tap away. A UPI payment gateway closes that gap to about a minute and a half:
- They pick dates and a room on your listing page, opened from Instagram, Google Maps, WhatsApp or your website, and see the real price for their exact stay, season and extra-person charges already applied.
- Checkout shows your UPI details for the amount due, the full stay or just the advance, whichever policy you set. No waiting for you to reply with an account number.
- They pay in their own UPI app, the same two taps they use for groceries, and the money goes directly to your bank account, not to a platform wallet.
- The booking lands in your dashboard as pending, ready for you to confirm the moment the payment shows up in your bank.
Compare that with the usual routine, enquiry, wait, negotiate, wait again, receive a UPI number in chat, hesitate about paying a stranger with no record of what was agreed. Every extra step leaks bookings, and the steps at the payment stage leak the most, because that is where trust is thinnest. The 0% UPI payment gateway removes the steps and keeps a record of everything.
YOUR SIDE OF THE COUNTER
Configure UPI payments once, from the dashboard
The dashboard is where your UPI payment gateway gets its instructions. Set it up during onboarding, change it any time, and every quote and checkout from that moment on follows the new rules, no developer, no support ticket, and nothing for the front desk to relearn.
- Your own UPI ID per property, payments land in the account you choose
- Advance policy, full payment, partial advance, or pay at property
- Manual verification built in. You confirm each booking once the money lands
- Switch a property to a card gateway whenever you need to
- Unlimited bookings and unlimited payments, there’s no metering to outgrow
- Every booking and its payment in one place, tidy and traceable at tax time
Here is the full backend walkthrough, onboarding a property, adding rooms and rates, and switching on UPI payments, recorded on a real account, so you can see the exact screens you will use before you sign up:
HONEST COMPARISON
0% UPI payment gateway vs card gateway vs OTA collect
| 0% UPI payment gateway | Card payment gateway | OTA collects for you | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost on a ₹10,000 booking | ₹0 | ~₹200 in gateway fees | ₹1,500–2,000 commission |
| Where the money lands | Your bank, instantly | Your bank, T+1 or later | Platform settles on its cycle |
| Payment modes | Every UPI app | Cards, netbanking, EMI, wallets | Platform checkout |
| Who confirms the booking | You, after verifying the payment | Auto-confirm | The platform |
| Best for | Advances and direct bookings | Guests who want cards or EMI | Discovery traffic |
These aren’t rivals; they’re choices. Run the UPI payment gateway as your default for direct bookings and advances, switch to a card gateway if your guests lean on cards and EMI, and let OTAs do what they’re good at: discovery. The channel you control should also be the one that costs you nothing, and since the UPI payment gateway has no per-transaction cost, there’s no surprise bill waiting at the end of a busy season.
THE MATH
What 0% actually adds up to over a season
It’s easier to see with real numbers. Say a five-room property does ₹20,000 a night in season and stays busy for a hundred nights a year , ₹20 lakh of room revenue. Through an OTA at 18%, ₹3.6 lakh of that is gone. Through a card gateway at 2%, ₹40,000 gone. Through a 0% UPI payment gateway: ₹0. Not discounted, not waived for the first year, not refunded as credits, simply never charged.
And because UPI settles instantly, the money is not just bigger. It is earlier. Advances arrive the night the guest books, not on a settlement cycle. For a property that buys provisions weekly and pays staff monthly, cash that arrives the same evening is worth more than the same cash arriving next Thursday. Across a wedding block or a long weekend, that timing difference is real working capital.
The honest caveat: the savings only materialise on bookings that come to you directly. That is why the UPI payment gateway ships as part of the direct booking engine rather than as a standalone widget, the same product that collects the payment is the one working to bring the booking to your own channel in the first place. A 0% UPI payment gateway doesn’t make you more money on its own. It just stops the money you’ve already earned from leaking on the way to you.
GET STARTED
How to set up your 0% UPI payment gateway
Setting up a 0% UPI payment gateway on OpenStays takes about 10 minutes with the guided wizard, no coding and no paperwork beyond your own UPI ID.
Total Time: 10 minutes
Onboard your property
Add rooms, room types, photos, rates and house rules in the guided wizard. Your hosted listing page goes live immediately, booking engine included.
Add your UPI ID and advance policy
Enter the UPI ID that should receive guest payments and choose full payment, partial advance or pay-at-property. Every UPI payment is verified by you before the booking confirms.
Share the link and take payments
Put your booking link in your Instagram bio, Google Maps profile and WhatsApp replies. From the first booking onwards, guests pay you directly over UPI, with 0% deducted.
BEYOND UPI
Need cards, netbanking or EMI too?
Some guests will always prefer a credit card, corporate travellers, international visitors, anyone splitting a big stay into EMIs. For them, OpenStays plugs a full card gateway into the same checkout through our Razorpay partnership: cards, netbanking, wallets and EMI, with automatic confirmation and settlement to your own account.
Standard gateway charges apply on those transactions, Razorpay’s, not ours, and the payment mode is your choice per property: 0% UPI as the default, or the card gateway when your guests lean on cards and EMI. Either way, OpenStays charges no commission on any booking; the software is a flat subscription you can check on the pricing page.
AVOID THESE
Four ways owners lose UPI payments
Sharing a UPI number in chat. A number pasted into WhatsApp has no amount attached, no booking attached and no record. Guests mistype amounts, screenshots get lost, and disputes come down to memory. A checkout that shows the exact amount ends all of it: the guest pays exactly what was quoted, against a booking that’s already sitting in your dashboard.
Taking bookings without an advance. If nothing is paid, nothing is committed. You have digitised the no-show problem, not solved it. Set at least a partial advance in your policy; guests who pay, arrive.
Forgetting to verify before confirming. A screenshot is not a settlement. Every booking waits as pending in your dashboard, so check your bank alert first and confirm only once the money has actually landed.
Collecting into an account nobody reconciles. Point the UPI payment gateway at one dedicated account per property, not whichever family member’s number is handy this week. Every payment then sits next to its booking in the dashboard, and tallying a season takes an evening instead of a fortnight of scrolling through three people’s transaction histories.
GOT QUESTIONS?
0% UPI payment gateway, frequently asked questions
What is a 0% UPI payment gateway?
It’s a checkout that collects guest payments over UPI, straight into your bank account with no commission and no per-transaction fee. UPI person-to-merchant payments are free on the rails themselves, so OpenStays simply never adds a cut on top.
Does OpenStays take any commission on bookings or payments?
No. OpenStays is never in the funds path, guests pay your UPI ID or your gateway account directly. The software is a flat subscription; current pricing is always on the pricing page.
How do I verify a UPI payment before confirming a booking?
Each reservation waits in your dashboard as pending. Check your bank SMS or app alert for the credit, then confirm with one tap. A booking stays pending until you confirm it, so a room is never sold on an unverified payment.
Can guests pay an advance instead of the full amount?
Yes. Set your advance policy per property, full payment, a partial advance, or pay at the property, and checkout quotes exactly that amount over the UPI payment gateway.
Which UPI apps can guests pay from?
Any of them. Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, BHIM or a bank’s own app, if it can pay a UPI ID, it works. There’s nothing for the guest to install or sign up for.
What if a guest wants to pay by card, netbanking or EMI?
Switch that property to card payments through the OpenStays–Razorpay partnership, cards, netbanking, wallets and EMI at the same checkout. Standard Razorpay gateway charges apply, and you can move back to 0% UPI whenever you like.
Do I need my own website to use it?
No. Onboarding generates a hosted listing page with the booking engine and UPI checkout built in. If you do have a website, embed the same engine into it, the hosted page runs the same 0% UPI payment gateway, so nothing changes when you add a website later.
Is there a limit on how many payments I can take?
OpenStays places no limits, bookings and payments are unlimited on every plan. Banks do cap the size of a single UPI transaction, so for very large amounts guests can simply split the payment into more than one transfer. In practice, advances for even large group bookings fit comfortably within everyday UPI limits.
Is a UPI payment gateway safe for guests?
Yes. Guests pay from their own UPI app with their own PIN, no card numbers shared, no details typed on an unfamiliar site, and every payment carries a bank-generated reference that both sides can trace. That same reference makes failed or duplicate payments easy to resolve, so refunds stay quick and disputes stay rare.
Does it work with bookings made on WhatsApp?
Yes. When the WhatsApp AI assistant closes a booking, it sends the guest the same checkout, so the payment still happens over the 0% UPI payment gateway, directly into your account, and the booking waits as pending until you confirm it.
What does the 0% UPI payment gateway cost?
The gateway itself charges nothing per payment , 0% means 0%. It comes as part of the OpenStays subscription, a flat yearly fee. Current pricing and any introductory offers are on the pricing page. Whatever you collect, the subscription stays the same.
How do refunds work if a guest cancels?
The money is already in your own bank account, so refunds are entirely in your hands, send the amount back to the guest from your own UPI app, under whatever cancellation policy you set. There’s no platform refund queue to wait on.
Your money. Your rooms. Zero cuts.
The 0% UPI payment gateway is live today, sets up in about 10 minutes, and never takes a paisa from a payment, the software is a flat yearly subscription, never a cut of your bookings.
The UPI payment gateway is one part of the direct booking engine, see how it fits homestays · hotels · resorts, or add cards via the Razorpay partnership.