PayFast is a Payment Provider for South Africans and South African websites. They enable easy, secure, and instant transfer of money between you and your customers.
PayFast does not include virtual terminal functionality and so cannot be seamlessly integrated with the Checkfront payment page. As such, PayFast 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.
Also, refunds are not directly supported by PayFast. You need to issue refunds through your PayFast dashboard and then manually update the Checkfront invoice to reflect the reversal.
Setup
Back to topTo enable PayFast, log in to your Checkfront account and navigate to Manage > Ecommerce Setup, making sure the Payment tab is selected.
Here you see a list of available payment modules. Locate the PayFast tile from the list.
You find it by clicking on the links in the left side menu labeled Available to [your country] or All. You can also search for the PayFast tile directly in the provided search box.
Hover over the tile, which turns grey, and click.
This opens the PayFast activation window, as pictured above. From here, enter your Merchant ID and Merchant Key credentials in the fields provided. Note that the API Passphrase is not mandatory but does add an extra layer of security to the integration.
If you have set a passphrase in the settings section of your PayFast account dashboard, then enter it in the API Passphrase field provided in the activation window. Please note, if you have set a passphrase in your PayFast account, then you MUST also enter it in Checkfront.
When done, click the blue Activate button.
PayFast is now successfully integrated with your Checkfront account and is listed under your section of Active Providers.
Sandbox (Test) Mode
Back to topPayFast includes a sandbox (test) mode so you can make sure the integration works correctly and you are happy with the functionality.
To activate sandbox mode check the option in the activation window.
To use sandbox mode you require a different set of credentials to your live account. You can create test credentials at https://sandbox.payfast.co.za
To use live credentials you need a PayFast account. Live credentials do not work in sandbox mode and vice versa.