Khalti merchant onboarding, API integration and where Khalti fits alongside eSewa in a Nepali business's payment stack.
Khalti is Nepal’s second wallet by mindshare and the one developers often praise for its API experience. For a Nepali online store, it usually arrives as the second integration — after eSewa — and the decision to add it is straightforward: some of your customers pay only from their favourite wallet, and Khalti is a favourite for many.
What Khalti offers merchants
- Wallet checkout — the two-tap payment from the Khalti app, with server-side verification
- Merchant dashboard — transaction search, settlement reports, refund handling
- Developer tooling — documented REST APIs, SDKs and a WooCommerce plugin; Khalti’s developer documentation is among the clearer payment docs in the Nepali market
- Sandbox testing — test keys before going live, which shortens the build
Onboarding checklist
The application is the standard Nepali merchant KYC. Have ready:
- Company/firm registration certificate
- PAN or VAT registration
- Bank account in the business name (settlement destination)
- Citizenship or passport of the proprietor or authorised signatory
- A working website with product, pricing, contact and refund pages — reviewers check it
Apply through Khalti’s merchant portal, submit documents, and receive live keys after approval. With the paperwork complete, approval is typically days; the incomplete-website case is what stretches it into weeks.
Integration in practice
With WooCommerce or another common cart, the plugin route is an afternoon: install, enter keys, test a sandbox transaction, verify the server-side status check, then switch to live keys. For custom stacks, follow the documented payment-initiation and verification flow — the verification call is what prevents forged success redirects, so treat it as part of checkout, not an extra.
The operational work mirrors every other rail: daily reconciliation of settlement reports against orders, a written refund path, and idempotent checkout so a timed-out confirmation doesn’t become a double payment.
Fees
Per-transaction rates vary by category and volume and change over time, so we do not publish numbers. Ask Khalti for the current rate sheet during onboarding and compare it against your eSewa annex — the two are usually close enough that wallet coverage, not fee arbitrage, decides whether to carry both.
Where Khalti fits in the stack
A pragmatic Nepali store’s payment stack in 2026 looks like this: wallets (eSewa
- Khalti) for the mass market, a bank rail — FonePay QR for counters, connectIPS for higher-ticket online payments — and a card or international payment route if you sell beyond Nepal. The full comparison lives in the payment gateways field guide.
FAQ
Do I need both eSewa and Khalti?
Most stores that take wallets seriously carry both. Wallet loyalty is real — a meaningful share of customers pay only from their preferred app, and losing that sale costs more than the second integration. With ready-made WooCommerce plugins, the second wallet is cheap to add.
Is Khalti only a wallet, or does it support bank payments too?
Khalti started as a wallet and has grown broader payment products, including bank-linked flows. Check the current product list in Khalti's merchant docs — the wallet checkout is the core, and extras vary over time.
What documents does Khalti merchant onboarding need?
The standard Nepali KYC set: business registration, PAN/VAT, a bank account in the business name, and the proprietor's or signatory's ID. An online store also needs a working site with product, pricing, contact and refund pages visible.