How to Connect eSewa and Khalti to Your Online Store in Minutes

You've built your store, added your products, and set your prices in NPR. There's just one thing standing between you and your first online sale: getting paid. In Nepal, that almost always means eSewa and Khalti — the two digital wallets your customers already have on their phones. The good news is that connecting them to your Saauzi store takes minutes, not days. This guide walks you through exactly how to do it, and how to avoid the small mistakes that cost merchants their first few orders.

Why eSewa and Khalti matter for Nepali stores

Most Nepali shoppers don't own an international credit card, and many are wary of typing card details online even if they do. What they trust is the wallet they already use to recharge their phone, pay the electricity bill, and split a bill with friends. If your checkout only offers bank transfer or cash, you're asking buyers to do extra work — and many will simply abandon the cart.

Offering eSewa and Khalti side by side covers the vast majority of digital-savvy customers. Pair them with Cash on Delivery (COD) for buyers outside the Kathmandu Valley who still prefer to pay the courier at the door, and you've covered nearly every payment habit in the country.

Before you start: what you'll need

Integration is quick, but you'll move faster if you gather these first:

• A registered eSewa merchant account (not a personal wallet). Apply through eSewa's merchant onboarding; you'll typically need your PAN/VAT certificate, citizenship or business registration, and a bank account in your business name.
• A Khalti merchant account, created via Khalti's merchant dashboard. Khalti issues you API credentials once your business is verified.
• Your merchant/secret keys from each provider. eSewa gives you a Merchant Code (and keys for its newer ePay v2 flow); Khalti provides a Public Key and a Secret Key.
• A bank account ready to receive settlements, since both wallets pay out to your bank, not back into a wallet.

If you don't have a PAN yet, get one before applying. Operating a store and accepting digital payments without proper tax registration creates problems at settlement and at audit time — it's far cheaper to set it up correctly from day one.

Connecting eSewa to your Saauzi store

Once your merchant account is approved, the actual setup is short:

1. In your Saauzi dashboard, open Settings → Payments.
2. Select eSewa from the list of payment methods and toggle it on.
3. Paste your eSewa Merchant Code and secret key into the fields provided.
4. Choose your mode. Use test/sandbox mode first if you want to confirm the flow, then switch to live when you're ready for real money.
5. Save. Your checkout now shows eSewa as an option.

When a customer chooses eSewa at checkout, they're redirected to eSewa's secure login, approve the payment, and return to your store with a confirmation. You never see or store their wallet PIN — the wallet handles authentication entirely.

Connecting Khalti to your Saauzi store

The Khalti flow mirrors eSewa:

1. Go to Settings → Payments and select Khalti.
2. Enter your Khalti Public Key and Secret Key from the Khalti merchant dashboard.
3. Toggle the method on and save.

Khalti supports more than just its own wallet — depending on your account, customers can pay through connected mobile banking and e-banking options too, which widens your reach without extra setup on your side.

Test before you go live — every time

This is the step most new merchants skip, and it's the one that prevents lost orders. Before announcing your store:

• Place a real low-value test order (say, Rs. 10) through each wallet and confirm the money actually lands in your bank settlement.
• Check that the order is marked paid in your Saauzi dashboard automatically — you shouldn't have to mark it manually.
• Test a failed or cancelled payment. Make sure a customer who backs out doesn't get charged and the order isn't wrongly marked paid.
• Confirm the customer receives a confirmation and you receive the order notification.

Run this check whenever you switch from test to live keys, and again before a big sales push.

Where Saauzi fits in

The reason this takes minutes rather than weeks is that Saauzi handles the integration layer for you — the secure redirects, the payment verification, and marking orders as paid all happen behind the scenes once you paste your keys. You manage your store, products, eSewa, Khalti, COD, and delivery from one dashboard, instead of stitching together separate tools and writing code to connect a payment gateway yourself.

Get ready for Dashain and Tihar

Festival season is when Nepali online sales spike hardest. Buyers are gifting, shopping for clothes, and ordering sweets and hampers — often late at night from their phones. A few things to prepare ahead of the rush:

• Verify your wallets are live weeks before, not the day demand hits.
• Keep COD on alongside wallets for customers outside the Valley, and confirm your courier handles COD collection and remittance in your delivery zones.
• Watch settlement timing. Wallet payouts to your bank aren't always instant, so don't count on same-day cash flow during a high-volume week.
• Show prices clearly in NPR, inclusive of VAT where applicable, so there are no surprises at checkout.

Common issues and quick fixes

• "Invalid merchant" error: usually a wrong key or a key still in test mode. Re-copy directly from the provider dashboard, with no extra spaces.
• Payment succeeds but order isn't marked paid: confirm you saved live keys, not sandbox keys, and that the method is toggled on.
• Settlement not arriving: check that the bank account on file matches your registered business name; mismatches hold up payouts.

Your takeaway

Don't wait for a "perfect" launch. Today, open Settings → Payments, switch on eSewa and Khalti with your merchant keys, place one Rs. 10 test order through each, and confirm it lands in your bank. Once that works, leave COD on for out-of-Valley buyers — and you're ready to take real orders, festival rush included.