WhatsApp catalog orders with automatic Razorpay payment links

When a customer sends a cart from your WhatsApp catalog, Relay turns it into a paid order on its own. It records the items, adds your shipping fee, creates a Razorpay payment link for the exact total and sends it in the same chat. When the customer pays, Relay marks the order paid and sends a confirmation. The money goes straight to your own Razorpay account.

TL;DR

• The problem: WhatsApp lets customers build a cart, but not pay for it. Most sellers still total the cart by hand, share a UPI ID, wait for a screenshot and check their bank app.
• What Relay does: every cart becomes an order with a correct total, a Razorpay payment link in the chat, and an automatic Paid status the moment the customer pays.
• Your money, your account. Links are created with your own Razorpay keys. Relay never touches the funds.
• No cart is forgotten. Links expire (24 hours by default), one reminder goes out about 2 hours before, and expired orders can be regenerated in one click.
• Built for teams. Orders appear in the chat, in the contact's sidebar and on one Orders page, and they can trigger your automations and webhooks.

Why is collecting payment on WhatsApp still so manual?#

Because WhatsApp's catalog stops at the cart. Meta lets customers "add multiple products to a cart while browsing your catalog and submit a single order", with up to 99 units of each item (Meta for Developers, sell products and services, checked 8 October 2026). What arrives on the business side is an order message: products, quantities and prices. There is no checkout and no payment step. The cart also can't be edited once it's sent.

So the work after "🛒 Order received" falls on you. For most Indian sellers, it looks like this:

1. Open the cart and do the maths. Three kurtis, two dupattas, shipping, maybe free shipping above ₹1,500. Usually on a calculator, sometimes wrong.
2. Type the total and your UPI ID, or forward a QR code.
3. Wait. The customer says "will pay in evening". Then they forget.
4. Get a screenshot. Check your bank app. Scroll. Is that ₹2,340 from this customer or from the one before?
5. Reply "received, thank you" and write the order down somewhere so it gets packed.

Each step is small. Together they cost you three things:

• Lost sales. Every minute between "I want this" and "here's how to pay" is a chance for the customer to cool off. If a cart arrives at 11:40 pm and you reply at 9 am, the moment has passed.
• Mistakes. A wrong total, a missed shipping fee or a payment matched to the wrong order means awkward follow-ups or money left on the table.
• Screenshot risk. A screenshot is a picture, not proof. Edited or reused screenshots are a known problem for small sellers, and the only real check is your bank statement.

It's also work that doesn't scale. One person can manage twenty orders a day this way. At two hundred, it takes over the day.

How do automatic Razorpay payment links for WhatsApp orders work?#

Relay sits between your WhatsApp number and your Razorpay account and does the five steps above for you. Here's the full path of one order:

1. The customer sends a cart from your WhatsApp catalog, exactly as they do today. Nothing changes for them.
2. Relay records the order. It reads each item, its quantity and its price from the order message, and calculates the total in paise, so there's no rounding drift. It adds your flat shipping fee and waives it when the order is at or above your free-shipping amount. The same cart sent twice is recorded once.
3. Relay creates a Razorpay payment link in your Razorpay account, for that exact total.
4. The link goes to the customer in the same chat, from the same WhatsApp number the order came in on. By default the message reads: Hi {{name}}, thanks for your order! Your total is {{total}}. Pay securely here: {{link}}. You can rewrite it in your own words.
5. The customer pays on Razorpay's checkout. Razorpay says its payment links accept "cards, UPI, wallets, and more" (Razorpay Payment Links, checked 8 October 2026). Which methods your customers see depends on what's enabled on your Razorpay account.
6. Razorpay tells Relay the moment it's paid. Relay verifies the signed webhook, marks the order Paid, records the time, and sends your confirmation: Hi {{name}}, we have received your payment of {{total}}. Thank you for your order!

From the customer's point of view: they sent a cart, got a link a few seconds later, paid with UPI and got a thank-you message. From yours: an order appeared already marked Paid, with no calculator, no screenshot and no bank-app scrolling.

What problems does this solve for a WhatsApp seller?#

Where does the money go, and is it safe?#

The money goes to your own Razorpay account. Relay is never in the middle.

• Your keys, your account. You paste your Razorpay Key ID and Key Secret into Settings → Payments. Relay checks them with Razorpay before saving. Every link is created in your account, so payouts follow your usual Razorpay settlement.
• Secrets are write-only. After you save them, Relay never shows your key secret or webhook secret again, only a masked "•••• saved". They're encrypted at rest.
• Each account has its own webhook URL. Razorpay's "paid" notice is checked against your webhook secret before Relay changes anything. A message that isn't signed by your Razorpay account can't mark an order paid.
• Nothing is applied twice. If Razorpay sends the same notification again, or two things happen to an order at once, the order still moves to Paid once, and the customer gets one confirmation.
• Only the right people can change things. Owners and admins manage the Razorpay connection. Agents can send, resend and regenerate links and mark orders fulfilled or cancelled. Viewers can only look.

Razorpay's own transaction fees apply as per your Razorpay agreement. Relay doesn't add a fee on top of the payment.

What happens when a customer doesn't pay?#

A link that stays open forever is risky: the customer might pay weeks later for something that's out of stock. So every link has a deadline, and Relay follows up for you.

• Links expire. The default is 24 hours. You can set anything from 1 to 720 hours (30 days).
• One gentle reminder. About 2 hours before the link expires, Relay sends the customer a reminder with the link, as long as WhatsApp's 24-hour reply window is still open. Only one reminder is sent per order, so you never spam a customer.
• Expired orders are clearly marked. The order moves to Expired. If the customer comes back, an agent clicks to regenerate a fresh link for the same order.
• Late payments still count. If a customer pays an old link just as it expires, Relay still records the payment and marks the order Paid. You never lose track of money that actually arrived.

One rule to know: WhatsApp lets businesses send free-form messages only within 24 hours of the customer's last message. A payment link is a normal chat message, so it needs to go out inside that window. With auto-send, that's never an issue, since the link goes out seconds after the cart. With manual sending, send links the same day.

How does your team manage WhatsApp orders in Relay?#

Orders show up wherever your team is already working:

• In the chat. Each order appears in the conversation as an order card with the items, total, status and payment link, plus the Send payment link button.
• In the contact sidebar. Open any customer to see their past orders and what they've paid, next to their tags and pipeline deals.
• On the Orders page. One list of every order across your WhatsApp numbers, with date, contact, items, total, status and payment time. Search by name or phone, filter by status, and open any order to see the full breakdown: subtotal, shipping, total, customer note and payment link.

When an order has been packed and shipped, mark it Fulfilled. If the customer cancels, mark it Cancelled. Everyone on the team sees the same status, so nobody asks "did this one pay?" in the group chat again.

Can WhatsApp orders trigger automations and other tools?#

Yes. Orders plug into the rest of Relay, so a payment can start the next step on its own:

• Automation triggers. Automations can start on order received and order paid. For example, when an order is paid, tag the contact "Customer", create a deal in your "To pack" pipeline, and assign the conversation to whoever handles dispatch.
• Webhooks to your other tools. Relay can send order.created, order.paid and order.expired events to your own systems, such as an inventory tool or a shipping app (developer docs).
• Read-only orders API. Developers can list and read orders through Relay's public API with the orders:read scope.

That's the difference between a payment link tool and a full order flow. The link gets you paid; the automations make sure the paid order actually ships.

How do you set it up?#

You need three things: a WhatsApp number connected to Relay, a product catalog connected to that number in Meta's Commerce Manager, and a Razorpay account. Then:

1. Open Settings → Payments in Relay and paste your Razorpay Key ID and Key Secret. Relay checks them with Razorpay and shows Connected.
2. Add the webhook in Razorpay. Copy the webhook URL shown in Relay. In the Razorpay Dashboard, open Accounts & Settings → Webhooks, add a webhook with that URL, tick the three events Relay lists (payment_link.paid, payment_link.expired and payment_link.cancelled), choose a secret, and paste the same secret into Relay.
3. Set your order rules: shipping fee, free-shipping amount, link expiry, and whether to send links automatically.
4. Write your messages (optional). Use {{name}}, {{total}} and {{link}} in the payment link message and the confirmation. The link message must include {{link}}, so a customer never gets a payment request without a way to pay.
5. Send yourself a test cart from your catalog and watch it go from Pending to Link sent to Paid.

None of it needs a developer.

Who is this most useful for?#

Any business whose customers already order by WhatsApp message:

• D2C and fashion brands taking orders from Instagram followers who message to buy.
• Home bakers, sweet shops and cloud kitchens with daily menus and pre-orders.
• Boutiques, jewellery and saree stores sending new-arrival catalogs to regular customers.
• Grocery, organic and dairy sellers with repeat weekly orders.
• Gifting, florists and stationery shops that get rushes around Diwali, Rakhi and Valentine's Day, when manual payment checks break down.

If a WhatsApp campaign brings in a wave of carts, auto-send makes sure each one gets a payment link while the customer is still interested, without hiring extra hands for the evening.

How much does it cost?#

WhatsApp catalog orders with Razorpay payment links are included in Relay's Growth plan, from ₹2,499 a month, and in the Business plan. There's no extra Relay fee per order or per payment. You pay Razorpay's usual charges on payments, and WhatsApp messages are billed from your Relay wallet as normal. For how WhatsApp's per-message charges work, see WhatsApp Business API pricing in India.

On the Starter plan, incoming orders are still recorded and shown read-only, so you never lose a customer's order. Upgrading turns on payment links and order updates.

The short version#

WhatsApp gave your customers a cart. Relay, the WhatsApp Business platform for Indian SMBs, gives that cart a checkout: a correct total, a Razorpay payment link in seconds, payment confirmed without screenshots, money in your own account, and every order tracked from "received" to "fulfilled". If you're still typing UPI IDs and checking bank apps, start a free trial and send yourself a test cart.