Zoho survey: 78% of Indian businesses may switch gateways for AI capabilities
Zoho Payment Technologies’ survey of 700-plus Indian businesses finds AI-led fraud detection, reconciliation and payment routing are becoming key gateway differentiators. Same-day settlement, lower MDR and integrations with accounting or ERP systems also rank highly for merchants.
What happened
Zoho Payment Technologies · Zoho’s survey of Indian merchants finds AI fraud detection, reconciliation and payment routing are reshaping payment-gateway
Key facts
- 78% of Indian businesses would switch payment gateways for expected AI capabilities
- More than 700 businesses surveyed
- Nearly 60% already use AI in payment operations
- 20% are evaluating AI capabilities
- 56% cite payment failures as a major challenge
- 46% cite reconciliation as a challenge
- 61% spend one to three hours daily on reconciliation
- Nearly 20% spend three to six hours daily on reconciliation
- 14% complete reconciliation in under an hour
- 62% would switch for same-day settlement
- 56% would switch for lower fees or MDR
- 50% would switch for better reconciliation
- 65% cite integrated accounting, billing or ERP systems with native AI as a reason to stay
- 83% would pay for guaranteed same-day settlement
Why this matters
Payments platforms, banks and ERP vendors should prioritize partnerships or acquisitions that add AI fraud, reconciliation, smart-routing and accounting-integration capabilities to defend merchant relationships and expand wallet share.
What to watch
- RBI guidance affecting payment-aggregator data use, AI decisioning, tokenization, settlement practices or merchant onboarding.
- Public launches of AI reconciliation, dynamic routing or fraud products by major Indian gateways and their disclosed merchant adoption rates.
- Changes in MDR, UPI monetization rules, card interchange economics or settlement-fee pricing.
- ERP/accounting platform partnerships or acquisitions involving gateway providers.
- Merchant churn, multi-gateway adoption, authorization-rate benchmarks and reported fraud-loss trends.
- Growth in same-day settlement penetration and the spread between standard and accelerated-settlement pricing.
- Payment gateways should package AI fraud detection, reconciliation and routing as measurable merchant outcomes, including approval-rate lift, fraud-loss reduction and reconciliation-hours saved.
- Acquire or deepen integrations with Tally, Zoho Books, ERP platforms, POS vendors and vertical SaaS providers to embed payment operations in daily finance workflows.
- Expand instant or same-day settlement offers with transparent pricing, while using risk-based eligibility to protect unit economics.
- Merchants should implement multi-gateway orchestration and A/B test routing, settlement speed and fraud performance before migrating volume.
- Banks and fintech lenders should target gateways with working-capital, settlement-advance and cash-flow underwriting products tied to real-time payment data.