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Payfast Payment Gateway Integration

Accept Payfast payments through one PaymentHood integration — South Africa. Free plugins, no PaymentHood transaction fee.

South Africa

Accept Payfast
without building the integration

Payfast is a South African payment gateway that lets local businesses accept card payments, Instant EFT, QR-code wallets and buy-now-pay-later through a single hosted checkout. It settles in South African Rand and is one of the most widely supported gateways across South African e-commerce platforms.

  • ZAR
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South Africa
6 payment methods
0% PaymentHood fee
Payfast
Region
South Africa
Methods
6
Credentials
Server-side only
PaymentHood fee
None
Status
Live
At a glance

Payfast in summary

Coverage
  • South Africa

Among the markets Payfast serves — their own list is authoritative.

Currencies
  • ZAR

Among those supported. Which ones your account can charge in depends on its registered country.

Fees
Set and billed by Payfast, and published on their pricing page. PaymentHood adds nothing on top, at any volume.
Official resources
Website · Developer docs

Written against Payfast's own documentation on . This page deliberately states no fees, no counts and no completeness claims, because those change without notice — for anything you are about to build on, Payfast's own documentation is the authority.

Payment methods

What your customers can pay with

Every method below runs through the same PaymentHood checkout. Turning one on or off is a dashboard setting, not a code change.

Cards

Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards

Instant EFT

Direct bank payment, confirmed in real time

QR wallets

Scan-to-pay via mobile wallet apps

Mobicred

Revolving credit facility, checked out like a card

Store cards

Retailer-issued credit accounts

MTN MoMo

Mobile money wallet

Integration

What PaymentHood handles for you

A direct Payfast integration is not just an API call. These are the parts every team ends up rebuilding — and the parts PaymentHood ships already done.

Credentials
Merchant ID and merchant key, held server-side in PaymentHood
Webhook security
ITN (Instant Transaction Notification) — signature validated, source IP confirmed against Payfast's published ranges
Payment verification
Server-side confirmation before fulfilment; an ITN that fails any single check does not mark the order paid
  • Idempotent charge creation, so a retried request never double-charges a customer
  • Automatic failover to another configured provider when Payfast is unreachable
  • One reconciliation view across Payfast and every other provider you run
  • Provider credentials never reach the storefront or the customer's browser
  • Adding or switching a provider later is a dashboard change, not a re-integration
Availability

Use Payfast on your platform

Install the free PaymentHood plugin for your store, then enable Payfast in your dashboard.

Payfast for WooCommerce

Accept Payfast payments on WooCommerce through the free PaymentHood WooCommerce plugin.

Setup guide

Payfast for WHMCS

Accept Payfast payments on WHMCS through the free PaymentHood WHMCS plugin.

Setup guide

Payfast for VirtueMart

Accept Payfast payments on VirtueMart through the free PaymentHood VirtueMart plugin.

Setup guide

Payfast for Phoca Cart

Accept Payfast payments on Phoca Cart through the free PaymentHood Phoca Cart plugin.

Setup guide

Payfast for J2Commerce

Accept Payfast payments on J2Commerce through the free PaymentHood J2Commerce plugin.

Setup guide
Setup

Connecting Payfast takes three steps

1

Open your Payfast account

Register directly with Payfast and complete their onboarding. Funds settle from Payfast into your own bank account — PaymentHood never holds merchant money.

2

Add the credentials to PaymentHood

Paste your Payfast API credentials into the PaymentHood dashboard. They are stored server-side and never exposed to your storefront.

3

Enable it at checkout

Install the PaymentHood plugin for your platform, paste your PaymentHood API key, and Payfast appears as a payment option. Test in sandbox, then switch to live.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

ITN stands for Instant Transaction Notification — the server-to-server callback Payfast sends when a payment completes. It is the only trustworthy signal that a payment succeeded, because the browser redirect can be tampered with or simply never happen. A correct ITN handler must validate the signature, confirm the request came from a Payfast IP address, and check that the amount paid matches the order. PaymentHood performs all three before releasing an order.

Payfast settles in South African Rand (ZAR). If you need to charge in other currencies, route those transactions to a different provider in your PaymentHood dashboard — the same checkout integration covers both.

Yes. You register directly with Payfast and connect your merchant credentials to PaymentHood. Funds settle from Payfast into your own bank account; PaymentHood never holds merchant money.

Yes — that is the main reason to run Payfast behind PaymentHood. You can keep Payfast for cards while sending Instant EFT to a different provider, or fail over automatically if one provider has an outage, without touching your store's checkout.

No. Payfast's fees are billed to you by Payfast. PaymentHood takes no percentage and no per-transaction cut — see PaymentHood pricing.

Start accepting Payfast payments

Free plugin, no PaymentHood transaction fee, and the option to add another provider later without touching your checkout.

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