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Payment Gateways: Pesapal

 

 

Pesapal is Kenya's leading payment service provider, enabling you to make and accept online & mobile payments. Pesapal provides a simple, safe and secure way for individuals and businesses to make and accept payments in Africa.

 

 

Pesapal Features

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Pesapal does not have virtual terminal features and requires that users process transactions through the Pesapal payment interface. This means that when it comes time to make a payment, your customer will be redirected from Checkfront to Pesapal and then back again once the transaction is complete.

Due to the lack of virtual terminal functionality, Pesapal cannot be seamlessly integrated with the Checkfront payment page. As such, Pesapal does not allow you to process credit cards on behalf of your customers in the Checkfront admin area. Payments can only be made via the customer-facing booking portal.   

 

 

Setup in Checkfront

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To activate the Pesapal payment gateway, navigate to Manage > E-Commerce in your Checkfront booking manager.
 
Locate the Pesapal tile, hover over it and click on the button labeled Pesapal.
 
 
 
Pesapal_Activate.png
 
 
 
From the activation window, you will need to input your Merchant API Key and your Merchant API Secret. Both of these are included in the email Pesapal sends to you after creating a business account with them and will look similar to the example above.
 
After inputting your credentials, click the blue Activate button to save the configuration.
 
 
 
 

Sandbox/Demo Mode

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Before going live with your new payment gateway, we recommend you conduct a few test transactions to make sure the system is working properly and receiving payments.

In the activation window we just worked with, you will see a checkbox labeled Sandbox/demo mode.

 

 

Pesapal_Sandbox.png

 

 

Check this box and then click the blue Activate/Update button to set the sandbox mode.

Please note, Pesapal requires a different set of API credentials when using the sandbox mode. You can find these in your Pesapal merchant dashboard below the transaction list in My Dashboard.

Create a few test bookings through the front end and make sure the payments are making their way through to the Checkfront Booking Manager. Once you are satisfied, you can begin receiving real payments from real customers.

Don't forget to input your live credentials before taking the first live payments!

 

 

IPN Settings

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It is recommended you configure the IPN settings within the Pesapal Merchant Dashboard to ensure all transactions are successfully recorded.

From within the Pesapal Merchant Dashboard, navigate to Account Settings > IPN Settings in the left sidebar.

 

 

IPN_Settings.png

 

 

Locate the section labeled Add new URL and input your website domain and IPN listener URL.

 

 

Merchant_IPN.png

 

 

Website Domain: This is the URL of your Checkfront Booking Manager and is unique to your account. You will replace myaccount with whatever your account is.

IPN Listener URL: This is the URL provided in the activation window we worked with earlier. Again, you will replace myaccount with whatever your account is.

 

Once you've input the URLs, click Save URL to complete the process. And that's it, all done!

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