Our Request Money feature is an ideal solution for individuals, freelancers and businesses who conduct their services (or sell/auction their goods) in an “offline” fashion. You can create a Payment Request, which we’ll send out to the recipient’s email address. The email contains a link which they can click to pay you via credit card, Instant EFT or any of the methods you have enabled on your PayFast account.
Step one – Login and Generate
Log in to your PayFast account and from your Dashboard hit the Generate button under Request Money.
Step two – Enter basic details
Enter your client’s email address, the amount that they owe you and if the payment is for goods, services or an auction. Please note that all payments through PayFast (as regulated by the South African Reserve Bank) should be for goods and services rendered as per our End User Agreement.
Step three – More details
Fill out the necessary fields on the second page. You can enter fields for Invoice ID, Order ID and a personal message if you wish to include it in your email.
Step four – Sent!
That’s it, you’re done! Our system will send your client an email with all of the details they need and we’ll let you know once the payment has been received. If you want to keep a copy of the unique link that your client will click on to pay you, you can save it.
What your client sees
They will receive an email in their inbox, sent from PayFast. It is a good idea to tell your customers to add us to add us to their mail contact list.
The email they receive will look like the one below. Please make sure that your logo has been uploaded as it will also display on the email (and on the PayFast Engine, where your client makes the actual payment). You can do so by clicking the Settings tab on your account. If you don’t have a logo, your email address will be shown in this area.
Checking payment status
As mentioned above, we’ll send you a notification once the payment has been made. You should however note that payment requests expire after 14 days. If you want to resend a request, simply log in to your PayFast account and select payment requests from the History tab.
We have some filters for you to find the exact payment request, but if you just want to hit the “Go” button it will show you all of your sent requests.
The last tab on the right will show if the request has been paid or if it has expired. If it is still active and your client hasn’t paid you yet, you can resend the email to them. If they haven’t paid you after two weeks the request will expire and you will have to create a new one.
Payment requests to Payouts
As soon as your client has paid you, the money will be in your PayFast account (minus our processing fee). You can request a Payout (also from your Dashboard) and we’ll send your money to your South African bank account.
Thanks for reading this tutorial and if you have any questions or comments about this, kindly let us know in the comments section below!
The Team @ PayFast
