Payment Providers: PayFast

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Locate: Manage > Ecommerce Setup > Payment
Prerequisites: Admin permissions to manage Payment Providers.

 

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PayFast provides payment processing for South African businesses. They enable easy, secure, and instant transfer of money between you and your Customers.

 

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The PayFast integration enables payments made via the Customer-facing booking portal.

PayFast does not include virtual terminal functionality, so the integration does not support Staff-side processing of payments. 

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.

 

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To enable PayFast, navigate to the Payment tab (Manage > Ecommerce Setup > Payment).

Here you see a list of available payment providers. Locate the PayFast listing by clicking on the links in the left side menu labelled Available to [your country] or All.  You can also search for PayFast using the input box at the top of the page.

 

Next, click the PayFast listing to open the Add-on Setup modal, 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 an API passphrase in your PayFast account (PayFast > Dashboard > Settings), 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 list of Active Providers.

 

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PayFast includes a sandbox (test) mode so you can make sure the integration works correctly and you are satisfied 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 than your live account. You can generate test credentials at https://sandbox.payfast.co.za.

You need a PayFast account to use live credentials. Live credentials do not work in sandbox mode and vice versa.