For most teams, working with Razorpay means opening a browser, logging into the dashboard, and navigating through a UI. But developers who live in their terminals should not have to context-switch to a browser for any Razorpay tasks.
Today, we are launching the Razorpay Command Line Interface (CLI), a tool that lets developers build, test, and manage their Razorpay integrations entirely from the command line.
Table of Contents
What The CLI Does
The CLI gives you direct access to Razorpay operations without touching the dashboard. It talks to the Razorpay API under the hood and covers the operations developers reach for most:
– Create and fetch payments, orders, and refunds from the command line
– Build terminal-based automations for recurring workflows
– Integrate Razorpay actions into CI/CD pipelines
– Use with AI coding agents to take Razorpay actions mid-session – no context switching, no browser
– Onboard new developers with a single `razorpay configure` command, and they are good to go
A quick example of what that looks like in practice:
# configure credentials once razorpay configure # fetch a payment razorpay payments fetch pay_XXXXXX # create an order razorpay orders create --amount 50000 --currency INR
The output is structured and machine-readable in JSON, YAML, or TOML, which means it composes naturally with the rest of your shell toolchain.
Why This Matters For Automation
The real value of a CLI is not interactive use. It is scripting. Developers reach for CLIs when they need to automate repetitive tasks, chain operations together, or wire a tool into a larger workflow. A CLI fits naturally into shell scripts, Makefiles, CI pipelines, and cron jobs in a way that a dashboard simply cannot.
If your team currently automates Razorpay interactions by constructing raw API calls with `curl` and parsing the output with `jq`, the CLI gives you a cleaner and more maintainable interface to the same operations.
Razorpay Going Headless
The dashboard is built for humans. It is useful, but it assumes someone is sitting in front of a browser making decisions. That assumption breaks down quickly when workflows are automated, infrastructure is code-driven, and your team expects every tool in the stack to be scriptable.
Going headless means operating Razorpay entirely through code – no UI dependency, no manual steps, no browser required. The API has always made this possible at the integration level, but outside of application code, the dashboard remained the only way to interact with Razorpay directly. That created a gap: scripts could not easily run ad hoc operations, pipelines could not query live state, and agents had no clean interface to reach for.
The CLI closes that gap. It’s what makes Razorpay fully headless, not just in your application, but across your entire workflow.
Whether it’s a developer debugging from a remote server, a script running in a CI job, or an agent working through a task, everything can now interact with Razorpay the same way: from the terminal, with plain text output, without a browser in sight.
The Timing: AI Agents And The Terminal
There is a more specific reason we are shipping this now.
Coding agents such as Claude Code or Cursor, and others are increasingly doing real work in development workflows. They write code, run commands, and take actions on behalf of the developer. And agents are well-suited to CLIs: CLIs are predictable, composable, and text-native. An agent can call a CLI command, read the output, and continue without needing special integration work.
With Razorpay CLI, an agent working on your codebase can look up a payment, create a test order, or verify a refund status as part of a larger task. The developer does not need to leave the editor or switch context. The agent reaches for the CLI the same way it would reach for `git` or `npm`.
Payment infrastructure becomes something your automation stack can reason about directly. That’s a bigger deal than it sounds.
Who This Is Built For
This is primarily built for dev teams using Razorpay – engineers who are terminal-native and find the dashboard a detour for tasks they would rather script or automate. If you are already writing shell scripts to interact with Razorpay, or wish you could, the CLI is built for you.
The secondary audience, and the one that will likely grow faster, is developers building with AI coding agents. As agentic development becomes a normal part of engineering workflows, the CLI becomes the interface between the agent and Razorpay’s infrastructure. Agents do not use dashboards. They use tools that are scriptable, composable, and text-native. The CLI is exactly that.
The product is not trying to win over non-technical merchants. It is purpose-built for developers who want Razorpay to fit into their workflow, not the other way around.
Use Cases
Debugging Transactions Without A Browser
When a payment fails in production, you can fetch the full transaction object from the terminal in seconds. No login, no navigation, no context switching. For a developer already deep in a debugging session, staying in the terminal means staying in flow.
Scripted Reconciliation
Teams that run nightly reconciliation jobs can pull transaction data directly as part of existing shell pipelines. The CLI replaces brittle, hand-rolled `curl` commands with a consistent, predictable interface across environments.
Integration Testing In CI
Create test orders, trigger payment flows, and assert on transaction states as part of your CI pipeline. The CLI fits into any shell-based test harness without additional SDKs or language-specific wrappers.
Local Development And API Exploration
When you are building a new integration and want to understand how the API behaves, the CLI is faster than writing throwaway scripts. Run a command, inspect the output, and iterate quickly. It is the same workflow developers use with database CLIs and cloud provider tools.
Agentic Development Workflows
A developer using Claude Code or Cursor to build a Razorpay integration can let the agent fetch live data, create test transactions, and verify API responses, all without leaving the editor. The agent treats the CLI the same way it would treat `git` or any other shell tool.
What Comes Next
The CLI is available today. Install it, run razorpay configure, and you have the full Razorpay API at your fingertips from the terminal. If you hit a missing operation or a workflow the current version does not support well, file an issue. The roadmap is driven by what developers actually need, and the best way to shape it is to use it and tell us what is missing.
