LSX PayFast Payment Gateway for Give

PayFast is a South African online payment gateway. The PayFast extension for GiveWP allows South African website owners to accept donations in South African Rands.

IMPORTANT: You must install Give – Donation Plugin on your website for this plugin to function.  Read the GiveWP Documentation to learn how to install and configure GiveWP on your website.

Once you have a donation form displaying you can follow along with this documentation and configure the PayFast extension for GiveWP and start accepting donations.

Getting Started

Important notice for existing users: If you previously bought the add-on, the following information is very important. There are a few steps you need to follow when moving to the new version.

• Deactivate and delete the previous plugin completely.
• Then install the new version. Either: Search for the plugin, “LSX PayFast Gateway for Give”, via the plugins screen inside your WordPress dashboard
• Or download the plugin from WordPress.org and upload it via your plugins screen

Unfortunately you may need to reconfigure payments via PayFast in Give. The plugin changed in a way that could not avoid this.

You are now ready to configure donations taken via PayFast.

1. Go to Donations > Settings > General
2. Set Base Country to South Africa
3. Set Currency to South African Rand (R)
4. Go to Donations > Settings > Payment Gateways
5. Click the Save Settings button

PayFast will now be a payment gateway option in the Donations Settings

Usage

Go to Donations > Settings > Payment Gateways

1. Click the checkbox marked “Enabled” under PayFast to enable.
2. Click the checkbox marked “Default” under PayFast to set it as the default payment gateway for GiveWP.

1. Once complete, select the “PayFast Settings” tab
2. Here you enter your Email Address, PayFast Merchant ID, PayFast Merchant Key and Passphrase. (login to PayFast to fetch these details for your account)
3. Click the Save Settings button

Recurring Donations

The PayFast extension for GiveWP supports recurring also referred to as subscription based payments. You’ll need to purchase the Recurring Donations Add On for GiveWP If you want to accept automatic recurring donations. Read the GiveWP Recurring Donations Documentation to learn how to configure automatic recurring donations on your website. Read the PayFast Recurring BIlling Documentation to learn how recurring billing works inside your PayFast administration interface.

Limitations with Recurring Donations

GiveWP Recurring Donations ONLY supports the registering of a recurring transaction and cancelling recurring transactions, however the following functionality is not supported

• GiveWP Recurring Donations allow daily or weekly transactions, PayFast only processes on a monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly and yearly basis and you must configure your donation form to coincide with this limitation.
• The donation amount, donation cycle and duration cannot be managed via the WordPress admin, but you can still login to your PayFast admin interface and manage recurring transaction parameters from there.
• The PayFast admin interface allows you to pause a recurring transaction, but this feature does not exist in GiveWP Recurring Donations

Testing

Create a free PayFast sandbox account, this is a completely different type of PayFast account that is meant for testing only.

Your live PayFast account details will not work in test mode, an error message will display on the PayFast payment page if live account details are used in test mode.

The PayFast sandbox account has virtually all the same settings and functionality as a live account. Do the following once you have created a sandbox account.

• Go to Donations > Settings > Payment Gateways and click the Test Mode checkbox.
• Scroll down to the PayFast Settings section and configure your PayFast Sandbox details
• Click the Save Settings button

You can now test your donation forms including recurring donations if you are using GiveWP Recurring Donations Add On. Read this from the PayFast developer documentation for more in depth knowledge on how recurring transaction work inside a sandbox account. If all your testing was successful you can go back to the payment gateways settings and configure your live PayFast account details. Remember to go to Donations > Settings > Payment Gateways and uncheck the Test Mode checkbox, before clicking the Save Settings button.

Documentation & Support

Whether you are an existing or new user of this plugin, detailed setup documentation can be found here.

The plugin is free, but we do not offer free support. Please consult our documentation which answers all questions related to setting the plugin up.

If it’s not working, please follow the steps below. We recommend you test on a development or staging version of your website, most good hosting companies offer a tool that can easily copy your site to a staging version. If not, contact your host directly to set one up.

1. Ensure that WordPress, your theme and plugins are fully up to date.
2. Activate a default WordPress theme, like twenty sixteen or twenty eighteen
3. Disable all plugins but Give and the PayFast Extension
4. Test your payments again
5. If it works, it means there is a problem with your theme or one of your other plugins that isn’t covered by our support policy. Or, there is a problem with your server environment.
6. If it still does not work, create a user with administrative access and email that to us at support@lsdev.biz, please include detailed steps on how to reproduce the error, reference any relevant links and include screenshots. We also need to know what operating system and browser you are using.
7. If you need assistance setting up the plugin, a customisation, or it needs to be made compatible with your theme and plugins, please contact us for a quote.