Answering your Frequently Asked Questions

The rebrand of Payfast, the company, into Network International is the latest stage of its integration into its parent organisation, following the acquisition of Payfast by Network in 2021. The company Network now offers an ecommerce solution called Payfast, which South African businesses can use to accept a variety of payment methods online.  

As Network, our collective vision is to strengthen our local offering by providing access to global expertise, resources and capabilities – ushering in a new era of unified payments innovation in South Africa. Find out more about the rebrand in our blog here or press release here. 

For now, there are minimal changes affecting existing merchants, and new merchants signing up with Payfast to accept payments online. As described in our blog, the main change is that our email domain is transitioning from payfast.io to network.global, and merchants can expect to see updates to our colour scheme to match Network. Existing merchants can continue using the Payfast integration on their websites and manage their business on the Payfast Dashboard. As Network, we’ll be able to offer our merchants an extended range of payment solutions and value-added services that cater for a unified payments experience. Find out more in our blog.  

For now, there are minimal changes affecting online shoppers who check out on the Payfast payment page. The payment journey remains exactly the same; online shoppers will just see an updated Payfast logo, which includes the Network chevron, and an updated colour scheme that matches the Network colours of Atlantic Blue and Amaranth Red.  

While Payfast the company has rebranded to Network International, the name Payfast remains as the ecommerce solution of Network, catering specifically to the South African market. For now, Payfast’s website, payfast.io, remains as is, as does the sign-up journey for new merchants on the website.  

Once a subscription is set up, it will automatically charge you according to the specified frequency and cycles.

– Editing a subscription

You can edit various details of your customer’s subscription, such as the amount, frequency, number of cycles, and next payment date. To do this, you need to login to your Payfast account, navigate to Transactions > Customer Subscriptions, retrieve the subscription you want to edit, click “…” under the Actions column, select “Edit subscription,” make the desired changes, acknowledge that email notifications may be triggered, and then click “Save”.

– Pausing a subscription

You can pause a subscription temporarily. To pause a subscription, you simply login to your Payfast account, go to Transactions > Customer Subscriptions, retrieve the subscription you want to pause, click “…” under the Actions column, select “Pause subscription,” choose the pause duration, acknowledge that email notifications may be triggered, and then click “Pause”.

Your customer will be notified via email that the subscription has been paused.

– Cancelling a subscription

You can cancel a subscription at any time. To do this, you need to login to your Payfast account, navigate to Transactions > Customer Subscriptions, find the subscription you want to cancel in your Subscriptions history, click “…” under the Action column, select “Cancel subscription,” and then click “Cancel”.

Please note that the actions taken (editing, pausing, or cancelling) may trigger email notifications to your customer.

To refund a credit card payment, do the following:

– Login to your Payfast account

– Navigate to Transactions > Transactions History

– Locate the transaction to be refunded

– Within the Action column, click on the “…” and select “Refund Transaction”

– On the refund transaction screen, select if the refund type is a full or partial amount of the original transaction amount

– Enter the amount of the refund (if a partial refund was selected)

– Enter the reason for the refund. This reason will be communicated to your customer via the refund email confirmation

– Optional: Select the checkbox to send yourself a copy of the confirmation email

– Select “Refund” to complete the refund process.

A completion status notification will reflect on the screen.

In order to accept payments through Payfast, your Company, Sole Trader or Non-Profit account needs to be verified. To do this, you’ll simply need to submit FICA documents such as proof of identity, address and bank account. You do not have to submit original documents, scanned copies are fine.

You can submit these documents on your Payfast Dashboard by navigating to Account > Verification Documents. Upload the required documents for your account type and click “Submit Documents”.

Alternatively, you can email your documents to [email protected]

Once your account has been verified, you’ll receive a confirmation email of your verification status.

Click on the links below to navigate to the section you need:

– Verify a Sole Trader account

– Documents to verify a sole trader’s physical address

– Verify a Company account

– Documents to verify a company’s physical address

– Verify a Non-Profit account

To change your Payfast account password, do the following:

1. Login to your Payfast account

2. Navigate to Account > Security

3. Next to Password, enter your current password and click “Reset Password”

4. Enter your new password in the New Password and Confirm New Password fields

5. Click “Update”.

If you have forgotten your password and these steps aren’t resolving the issue, please email [email protected] or call us on 021 300 4455

In order to payout funds in your Payfast account, you will have to enter the banking details for your account on the Account page (if these details are changed, your account will then be placed into an unverified status, until your details are updated and verified by our due diligence team), then request a payout. Please note that there is an R8.70 fee (excl. VAT) for processing each payout.

You can also set up automated payouts on your Payfast account so that they are processed automatically on a scheduled basis.

The default payout amount will be the available balance in your Payfast account. Your available balance reflects the funds you are eligible to payout, following a 48-hour withholding period. A retained balance may also be withheld to reduce the risk of fraud.

The Payfast Technical Support team can assist with integration issues related to our Developer Documentation.

We won’t be able to resolve the following issues, but may be able to offer some advice:

– The building of the checkout page/shopping cart outside of the Payfast integration

– Issues related to the notify URL, or ITN script, that are not related to the ITN security steps in the Payfast documentation. For example, how to update your system using the ITN, as this would be unique to your system

– Platform issues when developing a custom integration with an existing platform, such as WordPress

– Server/hosting issues. We recommend bringing these issues to the attention of your server administrator or hosting company.

– Make sure to use test (sandbox) credentials while testing in sandbox mode, and switch to live credentials when disabling test/sandbox mode

– Verify that the merchant ID and key on your Payfast account match the ones set in your plugin’s settings

– Be cautious about spaces before and after the merchant key. When copy-pasting the key, there might be accidental spaces included.

The following will cause a signature mismatch or a payment to fail:

– The most-likely cause is if you generated the MD5 hashed string with the variables in the wrong order

– A required field is missing

– A field is greater than the allowed character length

– Any of the fields contain excess or invalid characters

– The parameter string has been URLencoded incorrectly. The resultant URLencoding must be in uppercase (e.g. http%3A%2F%2F) and not lowercase like http%3a%2f%2f, and spaces encoded as ‘+’

– The parameter string has not been trimmed of white spaces on the ends

– The passphrase, if used, must be identical on your Payfast account as well as the site, and may consist only of letters, numbers and -_/

– Should you wish to set up recurring billing, then you will need to have a passphrase set and recurring billing enabled on your account in order to prevent the signature mismatch error

– You will need to ensure that the MD5 hash characters are in lowercase.

Should the above not be of assistance, please contact us either via [email protected] or simply call us on 021 300 4455.

To enable Split Payments, action is required by both the primary account and the secondary split account. The first step is for the primary account holder to enable Split Payments via their Payfast Dashboard.

To enable Split Payments, do the following:

– Login to your Payfast account

– Navigate to Settings > Payment methods

– Scroll down to “Split Payments”

– Next to Enable “Split Payments”, toggle to “Enabled”

– Optional: In the “Allowed” merchants field, enter the Payfast Merchant ID of the secondary split account and click “Add Merchant”. To add more than one Merchant ID, separate them with a comma.

Once Split Payments is enabled on your Payfast Dashboard, the second account holder, i.e. the platform, must give their Payfast Merchant ID and Merchant Key to you, the main account holder, so that you can activate Split Payments via a custom integration.

During this custom integration, a pre-agreed amount (either a fixed amount, percentage, or combination of both) of funds will be set to instantly split into the secondary account every time a buyer makes a payment on the platform.

For more information about custom integration, please view the Payfast Developer Documentation.

While we cannot change the plugin to resolve errors on our payment pages, we can try to guide you on how to resolve the issue with the help of your developer.

We will be unable to fix the following issues, but can offer advice on how to do so:

– Errors related to a third-party plugin and its files

– Orders not updating due to errors in the ITN script

– Server/host issues

– Platform issues, such as emails not being sent, cron jobs not running, platform errors, themes, etc.

– Missing settlement as a result of integrations that have not been performed correctly. 

Payfast managed plugins

With regards to our supported plugins (found under “Payfast Managed” plugins on the Shopping Carts page) we can assist with resolving the following:

– Payfast payment page errors

– Errors relating to the Payfast module files

– Orders not updating due to the ITN security steps failing.

Please note: We will always endeavour to keep the Payfast-supported plugins up to date, but will be unable to provide timelines for when these updates will be released.

We will be unable to fix the following issues, but can offer advice on how to do so:

– Server/host issues

– Customisation of modules (we will happily take suggestions into consideration, but will not perform any customisation requests)

– Our supported plugins that have been customised will not be supported/fixed by us. We will be able to advise on the issue in situations where investigation does not require access to the codebase of a third-party plugin and/or the developer of the plugin contacts us with details of the issues experienced

– Platform issues such as emails not being sent, cron jobs not running, platform errors, etc. Your website administrator would be best to advise on these types of issues.

We cannot integrate with cloud solutions as the integration will need to be performed by the cloud host.

Should the above not be of assistance, please contact us either via [email protected] or simply call us on 021 300 4455.

3D Secure is a security protocol that protects a buyer’s credit card against unauthorised use when shopping online. This simple service enables buyers to validate transactions they make over the internet by requesting a personal code (usually sent to their cell phone or email address as a one time PIN or push notification). It helps protect against fraudulent use by unauthorised individuals.

In 2019 an improved version of 3D Secure, called 3D Secure 2 (also known as 3DS2, EMV 3-D Secure or 3D Secure 2.0), was released as an improved level of authentication that is mobile-first and caters for a better user experience.

The most important features of 3D Secure 2 are as follows:

Frictionless authentication

3D Secure 2 uses frictionless authentication that allows card-issuing banks to verify cardholders and approve transactions without requiring manual input from the buyer, which is a faster and more accurate method than the first version of 3D Secure. This is achieved through risk-based authentication (RBA), which involves sending data about the cardholder and the transaction to the issuing bank who then compares it to the cardholder’s historical transactional data to determine fraud risk. If the risk is low then the payment is processed without the need for the cardholder to verify the transaction. If there is any risk, then the cardholder will be challenged to provide additional input to authenticate the payment.

Improved user experience

3D Secure 2 has been designed to use dynamic authentication methods such as biometrics and token-based authentication, facilitating a faster and unobtrusive authentication process. This is ideal for the smartphone environment and mobile banking apps, as it allows cardholders to authenticate their payment through their banking app using facial recognition or a fingerprint, for example.

With 3D Secure 2 there are no more page redirects, but rather the authentication request appears as a modal on the checkout page, bypassing the need for buyers to be redirected away from the checkout page to complete their payment, which has previously been associated with cart abandonment.

During office hours you can contact us on + 27 (0)21 300 4455 and speak to one of our Customer Service agents who are trained to assist you with your integration, alternatively you can send us an email at [email protected]

The bank usually has the money in your account within 24 hours. It does sometimes take 48 hours. The bank does have a very ‘vigilant’ fraud division and large amounts especially on foreign cards are often ‘intercepted’ by the fraud division. If the money is not in your account within 48 hours it usually means that it is with the fraud division. The fraud division will attempt to contact the cardholder’s bank to ensure the transaction is valid; this is for the merchant’s protection and to ensure that the card holder does not later charge back. The verification process usually adds an extra 24-48 (business) hours to the process, but is dependant on how quickly the cardholder’s bank responds.

Sometimes the bank combines one or more Paygate batches into a single batch on the bank statement or settles part of a batch and settles the outstanding transactions at a later date. Please follow these matters up with the Merchant Services department at your bank, as they will be able to advise as to the reason that this has occurred.

You do not need an internet merchant account to sign up with Paygate. We can assist you to apply for a merchant account with any of our supported banks.

Paygate is a gateway service that requires the use of an internet merchant account. Our Payfast team can assist you to sign up without a merchant account.

Yes, our PayHost product is ideally suited to mobile app payments.

PayHost gives you full control over the look and feel of the payment page. This allows your developer to handle the challenge of content presentation and layout on the mobile device in a way that suits your application.

Yes, our PayBatch product has been designed with recurring transactions in mind.