eSewa or Khalti? Choosing payments for your Nepali product
Payments make or break a digital product in Nepal. Here is how to think about which rails to support and why.
Meet customers where they already are
In Nepal, eSewa and Khalti are the trusted digital wallets most customers already use. For a consumer product, supporting them is not optional — it is the difference between a sale and an abandoned checkout.
Why support more than one
Different customers prefer different wallets, and outages happen. Supporting both eSewa and Khalti (plus cards for those who prefer them) maximises the chance that any given customer can pay you on the first try.
Build it behind one interface
Technically, the smart move is to put every gateway behind a single payment service in your code, so adding or switching a provider later touches one place — not your whole app. We build payments this way by default, with server-side amount checks and verified webhooks so money is never trusted from the browser.
The takeaway
Start with eSewa and Khalti, add cards if your audience needs them, and architect payments so you can evolve without a rebuild. Done right, payments become a quiet strength instead of a constant headache.
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