Last updated 20 October 2026
Printifi sends students' print jobs to your desk and tells them when to collect. You set the prices, you print, you hand over. These are the terms you agree to when your desk is created and each time a member of your staff signs in. They sit alongside the general terms of service, which also apply to you.
Your desk, your rates
Every price a student sees is yours: per page in black and white and in colour, for both sides, for stapling, for any extras you name (spiral binding, lamination, paper sizes), your minimum order and your bulk rate. Change them whenever you like; orders already placed keep the prices they were placed at. Your hours, your days closed and your Open switch decide when students see you as open.
Owner and staff
A desk has at least one owner. Owners set rates, payment details, hours, extras and staff, pair devices, record refunds and see the takings. Staff run the queue: accept, print, hand over, message students, count stock. Roles are set by an owner under Staff; the last owner cannot step down without naming another.
Printing what was ordered
Print the file as it was ordered — pages, colour, sides, copies, extras — and hand the job to whoever shows its QR code or token. If a file doesn't match its order (more pages, more colour than were counted), send a corrected bill before accepting; the student accepts the new price or cancels. Once an order is paid, the bill stands; a shortfall is taken in cash at the counter and recorded.
With the cover sheet on (it is by default), the file you open to print carries a labelled first page: the token, the student's first name, pages and settings, the shelf slot, and what's owed in cash. Its price — yours to set, ₹1 by default, up to ₹20 — is inside the student's price (disclosed in the terms, not itemised on the bill) and is part of what you're paid, with the platform fee applied to it like the rest. Its QR names the token and your desk only; it never proves who is collecting. Keep the sheet with the job; the student may discard it.
Students' files
Files are opened only to print them. Each opening is logged with who opened it. Files are deleted from Printifi six hours after a job is collected or cleared as unclaimed. Don't copy, keep or share a student's file.
The platform fee
When students pay Printifi's fee themselves — a small flat fee an order, paid to Printifi as credits before the order reaches you — you owe Printifi nothing on your orders. The student pays you your whole price, directly, and none of what follows about a fee applies to orders placed while it's on. An order that reaches you has already paid Printifi; whether you print it or not changes nothing for you.
Otherwise, Printifi's fee is a percentage of each order (with a small minimum), set by Printifi. It normally comes out of your price, not on top of it: the student pays what your rate card comes to — the same as walking in — and your share of that order is your price less the fee. You keep your prices; the fee is your commission on an order Printifi sent you, and it buys you the queue, the payment record and the cover for cash orders nobody collects. (Where Printifi has it set the other way, the fee is added to the student's bill instead and you are paid your full price. Every order keeps whichever way it was priced, whatever changes later.) For orders the student paid to you directly, the fee accrues on jobs collected (or cleared as unclaimed) and is settled to Printifi monthly. A job that has ended — handed over, cleared, cancelled or failed — stays ended, and a printed job ends by being handed over or cleared as never collected, not by being cancelled. The ledger in Takings shows what's due, and a desk whose fee is overdue past the grace period cannot open until it settles. For orders paid through Printifi, the fee is kept at source and nothing is owed.
Your first month carries no platform fee. Orders placed in the month from the day your desk is created are charged none — the student pays your price and it is all yours. Orders placed after that carry the fee as described above. (A desk that already existed when this began has the month from the day it was created.)
Printifi's monthly plan
Printifi may charge each desk a monthly plan, besides the platform fee on orders. There is none right now; if one begins, every desk is told the price first and gets a free month from that day. Your first month is free. Students still pay you directly — your UPI or cash — and the plan is paid by your desk to Printifi: for a number of months at a time, online through Cashfree to Printifi, or directly to Printifi and recorded by it, and the months are added to whatever is left. It never renews by itself; nothing is charged unless an owner pays. The desk app says so three days before it ends and on the day it does (and pushes it to phones with desk alerts on), and Takings always shows when it runs to.
If it ends and isn't renewed within 7 days, the desk is closed: students can't order and it can't be opened until it is renewed. Orders already placed are still yours to print, hand over or refund. A change of price applies from your next renewal, never to months already paid, and every desk is told when it changes. Printifi may give months free.
Payments through Printifi
From the day a desk accepted from its application opens — and at any other desk where Printifi has switched it on — students can pay through Printifi's payment partner, Cashfree Payments, until the desk's own Cashfree account (below) is live. Such an order is marked paid and queued the moment the money lands; you print without checking anything. Your share — the bill less the platform fee, less any refund in proportion — is owed to you and paid out by Printifi to the UPI id in your desk's Settings, or the account you gave Printifi, every Thursday, for everything paid up to then. Takings lists every online-paid order with the bill, the fee, your share and Cashfree's payment reference, the running balance, and every payout with the exact orders it covered — downloadable for your accounts. The desk's owner can pause payments through Printifi at any time; students then pay your UPI id directly, as always, and what is already owed is still paid out.
Your payout account. Where Printifi pays desks their share directly through Cashfree, you are asked — when your application is accepted, or in Settings — for the account your share goes to: a bank account or UPI id, with the holder's name, an email, a phone number and a PAN. These go from Printifi's server straight to Cashfree, which verifies the account and the PAN before paying anything; once it has, your share is split off at source and settled to that account daily. Printifi keeps none of these numbers — only which account it is, shown to you as its last four digits. An account Cashfree has accepted is changed only by asking Printifi.
Your own Cashfree account. A desk can open its own account with Cashfree Payments from the desk app (Settings → Payments): the shop's name and address, the owner's name and PAN (and the business's PAN, for a firm), its GSTIN or a declaration that its turnover is under the GST limit, and the bank account Cashfree settles to. The form starts filled in with what Printifi already has — your name, email and phone, and your application's phone and place — for you to check. These go from Printifi's server straight to Cashfree. Cashfree then has you verify your email, and your Aadhaar with an OTP to the phone linked to it, on its own page shown inside the desk app — Printifi never sees your Aadhaar or the OTP — and reviews the account, usually within a working day or two, and by email if it needs a document. Printifi keeps none of your details: only when they were sent, and the bank's name with the account's last four digits. Once Cashfree approves the account, students who pay you online pay straight into it, Cashfree settles to your bank (usually the next working day) and takes its own charge — about 2% — from each such payment. Printifi never holds that money. The desk's owners are told the moment Cashfree makes it live, and Takings shows Cashfree's own settlements — those on their way to your bank, and those made, with the bank's reference — and what was paid in since. Paying your UPI id directly stays free and stays available. Details Cashfree has approved change only through Cashfree. You can open your desk first and do this later: until the account is live, Printifi collects for a desk accepted from its application, as above.
Printifi Agent (optional, paid)
Printifi Agent is a monthly add-on your desk can buy from Printifi. With it on and a PC connected, staff tap Start printing and the agent prints the job on the printer that suits it — colour work to a colour printer, two-sided work to one that can, away from a printer that's busy, jammed, offline or one you've told it not to use — with the cover sheet first and the settings the student chose, then marks the order ready. From version 0.9 it prints a smart-colour file's black & white pages in black & white and only its colour pages in colour, as the student was charged. It prints nothing a person hasn't tapped Start printing on, and it never accepts, prices, refunds or cancels an order. If the only printer that may take a two-sided job can't turn the paper, it prints one side and says so on the card and in the student's timeline. It marks a job ready when the printer accepted it without refusing; what you hand over is still yours to check.
An owner connects a PC by downloading the setup from the desk app on that PC — or opening a setup link sent to it — and double-clicking it; a setup works once, within a day of being made. (A PC can also be connected by scanning the code the program shows.) The PC holds only a key for your desk, which an owner can disconnect from Settings at any time. It fetches a job's files only once Start printing has been tapped, each fetch is logged against the student's file as that PC, and the copy on the PC is deleted as soon as the job has printed.
You pay for a number of months at a time — online through Cashfree, to Printifi, or directly to Printifi and recorded by it — and the months are added to whatever is left. It doesn't renew by itself: nothing is charged unless an owner pays again. When it ends, your desk works exactly as it did before.
Refunds
You decide refunds for your jobs. A payment made directly to you is refunded by you, the way it was paid, and recorded on the order by an owner; the student is asked in the app whether it reached them, and a full refund takes Printifi's fee off the order once they say it did. A payment made through Printifi is refunded by an owner from the portal and sent back by Cashfree to what the student paid with; the refund comes out of your share. An order paid through Printifi that is cancelled, or that you mark as can't-print, is refunded in full by Printifi on its own. An order paid to you that the student cancels is yours to refund: you're told the moment they cancel, and the card says the refund is owed until you record it. The student-facing refund policy says the same from their side.
Cash orders, and the guarantee
Students may pay cash within a credit limit Printifi sets per student (it starts small and grows as they collect). A cash order within the limit goes into your queue at once, marked cash at pickup; you print it and take the cash at the handover — the handover records it. A cash order above the student's limit waits until they tap Leaving now; you may print it earlier, and then it is on you. A cash order still unpaid on your shelf when its time is up isn't cleared by itself: you're asked whether it was ever collected. Handed over, you tap Handed over as usual. Still on your shelf, you clear it as never collected, and Printifi credits you your price for the job — the bill less the platform fee — against your fee ledger, or in your next payout where Printifi collects for you; no fee is charged on it. Printifi recovers the amount from the student, whose account is closed at every desk until they do. Clearing a job you handed over charges the student for it twice. When a student pays their dues to you in cash, you record it in the app by scanning their code; that amount is then owed on to Printifi the same way.
Delivery by Printifi's runner
Printifi may switch your desk on for delivery: a student can then have a job brought to a spot on campus by Printifi's own runner. Your part doesn't change — print it, file it on the shelf under its cover sheet (which says where it's going) — and the runner collects it from there; the card says delivery, and with Printifi's runner once it has gone. A job in the runner's hands isn't yours to move; if it can't be delivered it comes back to your shelf as ready. The delivery fee is Printifi's, added after your bill and outside the platform fee; your price for the job is what it always was.
The money. Paid through Printifi: your share is the bill less the platform fee less the delivery fee, paid out as usual. Cash: the runner takes it on handover, and Printifi credits you your price for the job (bill less fee less delivery fee) against your fee ledger, or in your next payout — no fee is charged on it. Paid to you directly by UPI: you were paid the delivery fee too, and that part is owed on to Printifi like a fee. Each of these is a named line in Takings. A delivery order the student collects at your counter themselves is an ordinary handover: you take the money as usual and keep it, delivery fee included.
Jobs that go nowhere
You set two windows. An unpaid order past the first is cancelled and the student told. A ready job nobody collected past the second is cleared as unclaimed: its shelf slot frees, its files are deleted, the student is told, and what you were paid for it is yours — you printed it. What you do with the pages is up to you.
Conduct
Honest prices and hours; no printing of material you may not lawfully print; courtesy to students who raise a request or write to you about an order. Printifi can shut a desk that doesn't keep to this; its staff can finish the jobs already in hand and nothing more.
Ending
Leave whenever you like: unlist the desk, finish what's in the queue, settle any fee due. Nothing is owed for plan months you don't pay for. Order records and files are kept and deleted as the privacy policy describes.
Deleting your account (Settings → Your account) removes you from every desk you are on. A desk that is yours alone closes with it — unlisted, its devices and codes revoked, its UPI and payout details cleared — once nothing is left to finish or settle: no orders in the queue, no fee owed to Printifi and nothing Printifi still owes you. The only owner of a desk others work at makes someone else its owner first. The desk's order records stay, as its accounts.
Contact
Questions, corrections or requests about your data: ask at the desk you ordered from, who can reach Printifi.
See also the privacy policy, the terms of service, the refund policy and the terms for print desks.