PayFast is a payment processing service available to online sellers in South Africa. The WooCommerce extension allows local and international credit cards (Visa & MasterCard), Instant EFT and certain voucher payments to South African customers. If you want to offer PayFast as a payment method to your customers, you can sign up as an individual, business or registered charity who wants to charge for goods or services online. You don’t need a merchant account with your bank to process payments with PayFast.

WordPress integration is easy. You only need the WooCommerce plugin and its PayFast extension. From setup to processing your first payment literally takes a few minutes.

Configuration Options

After installing the plugin set your WooCommerce general settings to South Africa and select the Rand as currency. Navigate to the payment tab, select PayFast and check a box to enable the plugin . From there you simply input your PayFast details and enter the content you want your customers to see when they use PayFast.

This displays PayFast as an option at checkout (see above) that your shoppers can use. From here they are redirected away from your shop and into the PayFast payment terminal.

From the payment terminal your customers decide how they want to pay and enter in their details. As soon as they make the payment they are redirected back to your store.

More Payment Options

Your customers can also pay you using popular voucher services like MiMoney and UKash. You may want to accept these kind of payments because they can’t be charged back like credit cards. You get your money by requesting a payout when you want it. You can schedule a weekly payout on any day of the week (or month), or be paid out automatically as soon as you reach a determined balance, which is a really cool feature.

Strong Security Features

PayFast uses the highest level SSL encryption available and 3D secure is supported. The latter ensures you can take payments from cards issued by banks who have made 3D secure mandatory. All major retail banks now allow for this feature. PayFast will force 3D Secure on all transactions over R1000 if the card issuing bank participates with the protocol, which is the case with pretty much all the major banks. This is a great feature, transactions processed with 3D Secure can’t be charged back.

Backend Features

If you bank online you’ll feel right at home. PayFast lets you perform duties such as view your account status and request payouts. Change your personal info, set credit card restrictions, send email requests, view your fees history, generate and download statements. It’s an uncluttered and easy to use backend system:

Limitations

The extension doesn’t do HTTPS, which means customers are redirected to the PayFast terminal then back to your site when the payment is completed. The benefit of this is you don’t need to get your own SSL certificate and you piggy back on PayFast’s excellent security, which is probably expensive to keep.

Fees and What Do You Need

Well WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin are free.  From there, WooCommerce charges $50 for the PayFast extension. PayFast themselves charges the following fees to use their service.

The fees above are VAT exclusive and apply to Business and Individual accounts. Discounted rates are available for charities and volume discounts can be negotiated on busy accounts. Contact PayFast today to start the registration process. In the mean time, download WooCommerce for free and purchase the PayFast extension for your payment needs.

Other posts in this series

• SA Payment Gateways for WooCommerce
• eCommerce Security – What is SSL?
• eCommerce Security – What is 3D Secure?
• PayFast WooCommerce Extension