Documents, onboarding steps, integration and settlement — what a Nepali business actually needs to start accepting eSewa payments.
eSewa is the default wallet in Nepal — the app most of your customers already have funded. For a Nepali business selling online, it is usually the first rail to integrate, and the onboarding is more paperwork than technology. Here is what the process involves in 2026.
Who can apply
Merchant onboarding is for registered businesses. The application is evaluated against your firm’s identity, so gather before you start:
- Company or firm registration certificate (OCR/ward office registration)
- PAN or VAT registration certificate
- A bank account in the business name — settlement lands here, and mismatches between the registered name and the bank account are the most common rejection reason
- Citizenship or passport of the proprietor or authorised signatory
- A working website or app, if you are integrating online checkout: visible product pages, pricing, contact details and a refund policy
The last item matters more than applicants expect. Wallet providers review the site as part of KYC; a half-finished landing page invites questions, and questions invite delay.
The onboarding steps
- Apply through eSewa’s merchant channel — the business portal on esewa.com.np or an eSewa business relationship manager. Large cities have representatives; elsewhere, the online form is the path.
- Submit KYC documents and sign the merchant agreement. Read the settlement schedule and the fee annex — that annex is where your actual rate lives.
- Get credentials for the merchant panel and API keys for integration.
- Integrate — eSewa publishes REST APIs and ready plugins for WooCommerce and the common carts. eSewa’s developer documentation covers the ePay v2 flow: you initiate a payment, the customer confirms inside the eSewa app, and your server verifies the status. The verification step is not optional decoration — it is what protects you from forged success callbacks.
- Test in the sandbox, go live, and reconcile your first settlements by hand until the report format is familiar.
What integration costs you (beyond fees)
The engineering is a few days with the WooCommerce plugin, less with a standard platform. The permanent work is operational, and it is the same for every rail:
- Daily reconciliation of settlement reports against orders
- Refund discipline — know the refund path and its timing before launch, not after the first complaint
- Failure handling — a timed-out confirmation gets retried by nervous customers; idempotent checkout prevents double payments
Fees, honestly stated
We do not publish exact eSewa merchant rates, because they vary by category and volume and change over time — and because most of what circulates online is out of date. Ask eSewa for the current rate sheet as part of the application, and compare it against your other rails before you set product pricing. What you can plan around: wallet acceptance is a per-transaction cost model, so it scales with sales, and there is no meaningful fixed cost to carry.
Where eSewa fits in your stack
One rail rarely covers everyone. eSewa handles the wallet majority; pair it with a bank rail such as FonePay QR or connectIPS for customers who pay from bank accounts, Khalti for wallet choice, and a card route if you sell internationally — see our guide to accepting international payments from Nepal. The full comparison lives in our payment gateways field guide.
FAQ
How long does eSewa merchant onboarding take?
With complete documents — business registration, PAN/VAT, a bank account in the business name and a working website — approval is measured in days. Incomplete paperwork is the usual cause of week-long delays.
Do I need a registered company for an eSewa merchant account?
For a business merchant account, yes: eSewa onboards merchants against a registered firm with PAN/VAT. Individual sellers use the consumer wallet and QR, which is a different product with different limits.
What does eSewa charge merchants?
Per-transaction fees vary by category, ticket size and negotiated volume. Do not rely on any article — including this one — for the exact percentage; get the current rate sheet in writing from eSewa before you build your pricing.