Take payments with Cashfree
Connect your own Cashfree account so customers can pay by UPI, card, net banking, wallet or pay-later — where to find your App ID and Secret Key, and what to check if they're rejected.
Last updated 28 August 2026
Cashfree is an Indian payment gateway that takes UPI, credit and debit cards, net banking, wallets and pay-later options. You connect your own Cashfree account, and every payment settles into your account — SitesPlaced is never in the middle and takes no cut on any plan.
Like PhonePe, this is worth having even alongside Razorpay: gateways approve different merchants and quote different rates, and a second one connected means an outage or a declined application doesn't stop you selling.
Before you start
You need a Cashfree account that has been activated for live payments. Signing up is free at cashfree.com; they will ask for your business details and a bank account, and activation is their decision. Until it comes through, your production keys exist but won't work — which is the single most common reason connecting fails here.
Step 1 — Get your API keys
- 1Sign in to your Cashfree dashboard.
- 2Open Developers → API Keys in the left-hand menu.
- 3At the top of the page, switch the environment to Production (the other option is Sandbox, their test mode).
- 4Copy the App ID, then reveal and copy the Secret Key. The Secret Key usually starts with
cfsk_ma_prod_. - 5In your store dashboard, open Settings → Payments & invoices and find the Cashfree card.
- 6Paste both, leave Mode on Production, and click Connect Cashfree.
Remove any IP allowlist on the key
Cashfree lets you restrict a key to specific IP addresses. If yours has one, remove it — our servers do not have a fixed IP address, so an allowlisted key can never work here and will fail with an error that looks like a bad key. You'll find the setting next to the key in Developers → API Keys.
We test the keys against your Cashfree account before saving anything, so a key that hasn't been activated, or one from the wrong environment, is refused here rather than at a customer's checkout.
Step 2 — Switch it on
Tick Customers can pay with Cashfree on the card. A Pay Online option now appears at your checkout. Place a small test order on your own store to see it end to end — you can refund yourself from your Cashfree dashboard afterwards.
Do I need to set up a webhook?
No. We send the notification address to Cashfree with every payment automatically, so there is nothing to configure. The card shows you the address anyway — if you'd like a second safety net, or Cashfree's support asks you to, you can add it under Developers → Webhooks for the Payment Success event. Nothing breaks if you don't.
What your customers see
Choosing Pay Online at checkout opens Cashfree's own payment page in the same tab, where the customer picks UPI, card, net banking, wallet or pay-later — whichever methods you have enabled in your Cashfree dashboard. They come straight back to your store and see their confirmation. The order shows up in your Orders tab marked paid, with the Cashfree payment ID on it so you can match it to your Cashfree dashboard.
What we do with your keys
- Your Secret Key is encrypted before it is stored, and stripped out of every page your website sends to a browser. It never appears in your site's source.
- Payments go straight from your customer to your Cashfree account. We never hold your money and cannot pay ourselves out of it.
- We never confirm a payment on the customer's say-so. Cashfree signs the notifications it sends us, and we read the order back from Cashfree — checking the amount matches — before marking anything paid.
- Disconnect removes both values from our systems immediately. You can also regenerate the Secret Key inside Cashfree at any time, which stops the old one working straight away.
More on all of this: How SitesPlaced handles your keys.
If something goes wrong
It says Cashfree rejected my credentials.
Usually one of three things. (1) The keys are from the Sandbox environment but Mode is set to Production, or the reverse — the environment switch is at the top of the API Keys page. (2) Your account hasn't been activated for live payments yet; check for a banner in your Cashfree dashboard. (3) The key has an IP allowlist on it — remove it, as our servers have no fixed IP.
A customer paid but the order still says pending.
Give it a few seconds and refresh; confirmation is usually instant. If it's still pending, open the order in your Orders tab — if the money is in your Cashfree dashboard, use Mark as paid and the order will confirm, send the emails and update your stock.
The payment page won't open.
This is almost always a browser extension or an ad blocker stopping Cashfree's script from loading. Ask the customer to try in a normal (non-private) window with extensions off, or offer another payment method.
Can I test before going live?
Yes. Copy the App ID and Secret Key from the Sandbox environment and set Mode to Test. Cashfree publish test UPI IDs and card numbers you can pay with. Remember to reconnect with production keys before you start selling — sandbox payments never settle.
Where do I issue refunds?
In your Cashfree dashboard, on the transaction. The order in SitesPlaced won't change on its own for a Cashfree refund, so update its status by hand so your records match.
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