When Do ONDC Sellers Get Paid? The Real Timeline

If you search this question today you will mostly find two things. Share-market pages explaining T+2 stock settlement, which has nothing to do with your shop. And a couple of seller-app pages saying “T+1 or T+2” with no arithmetic behind it.

Nobody publishes the actual chain. So here it is, from our own floor.

I run Kaarobari, a Seller App in the ONDC Network, from Dhule in Maharashtra. Before we wrote a single line of payout code, we sat with a real settlement file from a live buyer app on the network and traced every rupee in it, row by row. This guide is that file, plus the deduction chain exactly as our own code applies it, written out in full.

No promises. Just what happens.

📊 The journey of one rupee, from the buyer’s phone to your bank

Why “T+2” is the wrong question

Because your money does not travel in one hop. It travels through three pairs of hands, and each pair has its own clock.

The buyer taps “Pay” in a buyer app. That is the shopping app where your product appeared. That app collects the money. It does not send it to you. It does not even send it to us immediately.

So when someone asks “is ONDC settlement T+1 or T+2?”, the honest reply is: T+2 from what? From delivery? From the close of the return window? From the day the money lands with the Seller App? Those are three different dates, and the gap between the first and the last is where every seller’s confusion lives.

Let us walk the four stages one at a time.

Stage 1 — The buyer pays, and the buyer app holds it

Day 0. The order is placed and paid for inside the buyer app.

That money now sits with the buyer app. This is not a trick. It is how the network is designed. The app that collected the payment is responsible for it until the order is genuinely done, because it is the app the customer will complain to if the packet never arrives.

What “genuinely done” means depends on your category, and this detail is written into ONDC’s own payments advisory:

That 4-hour grocery anchor is the single most useful number in this whole article for a kirana seller, and almost nobody quotes it. Your clock does not start at “delivered”. It starts when the buyer’s window to complain has closed.

Stage 2 — How long the hold really lasts

Here is where written rules and lived experience part company.

The advisory above is explicitly non-binding, and it has since been superseded by RSF 2.0, the Reconciliation and Settlement Framework the network now runs on. In practice, buyer apps set their own cycles.

What we measured: in the real settlement file we studied, the buyer app held the money for roughly 7 days after the order, then remitted a batch. Not 1 day. Not 2. About a week.

That is one buyer app over one period, so treat it as a data point, not a law of nature. But it is a real file with real dates in it, which is more than “T+1 or T+2” usually has behind it.

Why the extra days? Batching. It is far cheaper for an app to make one remittance covering hundreds of orders than to fire a bank transfer per order. Every layer in this chain batches, including us. You will see that again in Stage 4.

Practical takeaway: plan your shop’s cash on roughly a week to ten days, not on delivery day. If you are buying stock on credit, that gap is the number that matters, not the fee percentage everyone argues about.

Stage 3 — The remittance and the file nobody sees

When the buyer app finally pays, it does not just send a lump sum. It sends money plus a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is the interesting part.

The file we worked from carried, for every single order: the order ID, the seller’s name, the gross amount, the buyer app’s own commission split into rate / fee / GST / total, the amount actually remitted, the seller app’s commission split the same way, a TCS column, a TDS column, the final net owed to the seller, the seller’s bank account and IFSC, and two status flags — one saying “the buyer app has paid the seller app”, another saying “the seller app has not yet paid the seller”.

That second flag is the honest one. It exists because the two events are genuinely separate.

📊 One row of a real settlement file

Order ID, seller name and account number withheld. The arithmetic is exactly as it appeared in the file.

Stage 4 — One transfer, one UTR, many orders

Now the Seller App pays you. And this is the part that confuses sellers most, so read this twice.

You do not get one bank credit per order. All your orders in that cycle are added up and paid as a single bank transfer with a single UTR number.

In the file we studied, a grocery shop’s whole cycle came through exactly like that: page after page of small orders, one bank credit, one UTR. Nothing in the passbook tells you which orders were in it. The file does, and so does your dashboard.

📊 Many orders in, one credit out

So when you open your passbook and see one unfamiliar credit, do not panic and do not start counting orders in your head. Open the app and match the UTR. That is what the UTR is for.

How this works at Kaarobari today — the honest version

I am going to be plain here, because a payments page that oversells is worse than no page at all.

The ONDC Network has a full automated settlement layer (RSF 2.0, with a network settlement agency behind it). We have built and certified our side of those protocol APIs, but we are not yet settling real money through that automated rail. The operational onboarding for it is a separate, ongoing piece of work.

This is not a claim invented for this article. It is the wording on our own public disclosures page: “Seller settlement is released by us after the Buyer App releases the order amount to us under the ONDC settlement process; at present each payout is reviewed and released manually.” We removed an older fixed-date promise from that page for one reason — we do not control when the buyer app settles to us, so we cannot promise a date. Any seller app that does promise you a fixed payout date on the ONDC Network is promising something that is not in its hands.

What that means for you in practice: your money is not sitting inside some app’s wallet waiting for a minimum-balance rule. It moves from a bank account to your bank account, and you get a UTR you can take to your own bank.

What actually gets cut from a ₹1,000 order?

This is the section I wish someone had published when I started. Every number below comes from the same code that computes our settlements — not from a marketing slide.

Take a ₹1,000 order. The buyer app on this one declared a 3% finder fee, seller and buyer are in the same state, and the PAN is linked to Aadhaar. Buyer-app rates differ from app to app (roughly 2-4% in practice, capped by the network at 3% grocery, 5% food, 8% fashion), so your own numbers will move a little.

📊 The ₹1,000 waterfall — every rupee, named

Three things worth noticing in that receipt.

One. Our pricing page shows the simple version: ₹1,000 order → ₹20 to us → ₹980 to you. That box is about our fee only, and it is accurate about our fee. This receipt is the whole journey, including the two parties that are not us. Note also that our 2% is charged on the ₹964.60 that reaches us, not on the ₹1,000 — so it works out to ₹19.29, under 2% of what the customer paid. No monthly fee, no listing fee, 2% only on delivered orders, and nothing extra hiding behind it.

Two. Of the ₹63.94 that did not reach you, only ₹19.29 is our income. ₹30 went to the buyer app that found your customer. ₹14.65 went to the government in GST, TCS and TDS. A seller app that publishes only its own percentage is not lying — it is just not showing you the whole page.

Three. TCS and TDS are not fees. They are your own tax, deposited in your name. TCS is reported in a monthly GSTR-8 return — against your GSTIN if you are registered, and against your GST enrolment number if you sell on the no-GST route. TDS shows up against your PAN. Your accountant can adjust both. Ask your CA how to claim them; do not write them off as “kat gaya”.

The same order, two different answers

Here is a comparison you will not find anywhere else, because it needs two real fee tables.

That real settlement file had a ₹50 order in it. Traced end to end, against the same ₹50 order run through our production fee code today:

A difference of about 35 paise on a ₹50 order. Tiny on one order, and it only becomes visible when a whole cycle is added up. Which is the honest way to talk about commission — not “lowest fees ever”, just the arithmetic, on a real order, with the working shown. (No names here on purpose. The point is the method, not a competitor.)

The ₹47 mistake: your PAN and Aadhaar

This one deduction can quietly cost you more than everything else combined, and it has nothing to do with any platform.

Under the income-tax rules, if your PAN is not linked with your Aadhaar, it is treated as inoperative — and TDS is deducted at the higher floor rate instead of 0.1%. In our settlement code that floor is 5%.

Ten orders a day at ₹1,000 each, and an unlinked PAN costs you roughly ₹14,000 a month. I have never seen this written on a seller-onboarding page. It should be on all of them.

Does TCS apply if I don’t have GST?

Short answer: on our platform today, yes — TCS is deducted from every seller, including sellers on the no-GST enrolment route.

The longer answer is genuinely interesting, and worth your time.

Section 52 of the CGST Act — the TCS section — applies to the “net value of taxable supplies” made by registered persons. There is a notification exempting unregistered sellers from TCS. Read plainly, a seller with only a GST enrolment number should have no TCS deducted at all.

So why do we still deduct it? Because our chartered accountant advised the conservative side, and we took it. Under-collecting TCS is a compliance problem for us with a penalty attached; over-collecting is a number your accountant can reclaim. Our settlement code carries an explicit switch for this exact question, so the day the position is settled we can flip it without touching anything else.

I would rather tell you this plainly than let you discover a ₹4.82 line and assume it was a hidden charge.

If the no-GST route is new to you, the full rules — including the one real catch — are in our guide on selling online without GST. And GSTR-8 does have a separate table (3.1) for reporting exactly these unregistered-seller amounts against an enrolment number, so nothing about this route is off the books.

Where do I see all this in the app?

Two places, and they answer two different questions.

Per order — “what will this order pay me?” Open any order and you will find a card titled “How much you get from this order”. It reads top to bottom, in exactly this shape:

📊 The per-order card in your dashboard

Notice the wording on the TCS and TDS lines. We label them as things you get back, because that is what they are.

The card carries an Estimate tag, deliberately. We do not control the buyer app’s file; the file is the authority. A card promising an exact figure we cannot guarantee would be worse than no card at all. We built this in the first place because a seller told us, in exactly these words, that there was no way to know how any of it was being calculated.

Before the buyer app confirms settlement, that spot says plainly: “Settlement pending — once the buyer app confirms the settlement, your breakdown will appear here.”

Across orders — “what has been paid to me?” The Payments screen shows Total Received Payment, Total Pending Payment, and a table with one row per settlement: Order ID · Settlement date · Net amount · UTR · Bank · Status. Open any row for the ten-line break-up, right down to logistics charge and the place of supply (intra-state or inter-state) that decides how your TCS is split.

There are exactly five statuses, and they mean:

One honest note about that screen: it fills in only once real payout data has been recorded. Between your first delivery and your first payout cycle it can read “No settlements yet” while you have clearly delivered orders — because at that moment the money genuinely has not moved. It is not a bug and it is not your money going missing; it is the Stage-2 hold rendered as an empty table. A plain line explaining this on the screen itself is on our fix list.

What can delay your money?

Ranked by how often we actually see it.

Is my money safe in this chain?

Fair fear. Here is what actually protects you, in order of strength.

• The paper trail is not ours to invent. The amount owed to you is computed from the buyer app’s file, not from a number we type in. Two independent parties’ records have to agree on it.
• Every payout carries a UTR. A UTR is a bank reference. You can take it to your own bank branch and they can trace it. It is not a screenshot from an app.
• Deductions are itemised per order. Not “charges: ₹64”. Every rupee has a named line, and you can open any single order and see its own arithmetic.
• The company is a real, findable company. NEXSOL INFOTECH PVT LTD, CIN U62099MR2026PTC474666, registered office in Dhule, Maharashtra, with a named grievance officer published on the site. Type the CIN into the MCA portal if you want to check us. Please do.
• And you can leave. No contract period, no lock-in, no exit fee. Your catalogue is yours. One message and the account closes.

What the official documents actually say

Since almost nothing on this topic is sourced properly, here is where each rule in this article comes from — all public, all checkable.

One warning worth its own line: several ONDC-authored tax PDFs still circulating on the internet quote the old rates — TCS 1% and TDS 1%. Those are out of date. The current rates are 0.5% and 0.1%, and our code uses the current ones. If a page quotes 1%/1%, it has not been updated since 2023.

Aapke sawaal (FAQ)

Read next

Sources & official links

• ONDC Reconciliation and Settlement Framework: resources.ondc.org — the official RSF documents
• ONDC Network Policy — Schedule 3A, settlement duties: resources.ondc.org
• ONDC guidance on tax: resources.ondc.org — note that some PDFs there still quote the pre-2024 TCS/TDS rates
• GST portal (GSTR-8, enrolment number): gst.gov.in
• Income Tax portal (Link Aadhaar Status, Form 26AS): incometax.gov.in
• ⚠️ These are the only official sites. Anyone charging you a fee to “check your settlement” or “release your ONDC payment” is running a scam. No one on this network needs a payment from you to send you your own money.

Written by Tejas, founder of Kaarobari (NEXSOL INFOTECH PVT LTD, CIN U62099MR2026PTC474666, Dhule, Maharashtra) — a Seller App in the ONDC Network. The deduction chain here (2% success fee, GST 18%, TCS 0.5%, TDS 0.1% and the 5% inoperative-PAN floor) is exactly what our settlement code applies, August 2026, plus our line-by-line reading of a real buyer-app settlement file. We publish what we can verify, with dates. If a number here is wrong, tell us and we will correct the page, not just the date.