ACCEPT PAYFAST PAYMENTS

Boost Your Donations with Payfast and Charitable

Securely accept 18+ payment processing methods in South Africa, including credit cards, Instant EFT, QR codes, Mobicred and store cards, with no hidden fees.

Charitable Payfast integration

Basic

January 7, 2021

Payment

Unlock Secure, Contactless Donations with Payfast

Payfast’s seamless integration with Charitable creates a powerful donation system that takes just minutes to set up. Donors enjoy a smooth, secure payment experience while you benefit from immediate payouts, recurring donations, and detailed reporting. With built-in security features and automated payment processing, you can focus on your mission while Payfast and Charitable handle the technical details of donation management.

Similar Extensions

What Payfast and Charitable Can Do For You

Secure checkout

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Local payment methods

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Recurring donations

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Raise funds faster and with less stress

Join over 10,000+ non-profits that are raising funds faster.

Top Reasons to Power Your Charitable Donations with Payfast

Instant Payment Integration

Quick and Easy Integration Process

Setting up Payfast with Charitable is quick and easy, and anyone can do it. The process is designed to be user-friendly. You won’t need any coding experience or special technical skills to get started.

The whole setup usually takes between 5 to 10 minutes to complete. All you need to do is copy and paste your account details into the right places. Once you’re done, you can start accepting donations through Payfast instantly on your website.

Simple setup process

Minimal technical requirements

Automatic syncing

Enable Payfast payments
Payment methods supported by Payfast

Built for South Africa

Secure & Flexible Payments in South Africa

Payfast is built for the South African market, with more than 20 payment methods to choose from. Donations settle in South African Rand, which is also your base currency in Charitable.

International donors are not shut out. Payfast’s Multi-Currency Pricing lets a donor choose their own currency at checkout, see the converted amount before they confirm, and Payfast pays you out in Rand. It covers Visa and Mastercard, and you switch it on from your Payfast account.

Payfast uses fraud detection and secure encryption so both your organization and your donors are protected, flagging suspicious transactions and verifying in real time.

Multiple layers of security

Donations settle in South African Rand

Donors can pay in their own currency

Secure Regular Donors

Recurring Donations for Continuous Support

Payfast’s integration with Charitable lets your donors contribute to your cause regularly by choosing their preferred amount and schedule.

You can offer various donation schedules including monthly, quarterly, bi-annual, or annual payments.

Worried about more admin work? You can set up automations and you never have to worry about the next payment. We handle all the processing, saving you time and effort on administration.

Flexible recurring schedules

Automated billing

Secure card management

Payfast recurring donations

Ready to Get More Donations with Payfast?

Get started with Charitable Pro today and start collecting donations online with Payfast. We’re so confident you’ll love it that we back every purchase with our 14-day money-back guarantee – giving you the freedom to explore risk-free.

Payment Methods Supported With Payfast

The Payfast integration with Charitable lets you accept donations through a wide range of payment options popular in South Africa, including the following.

  • Card payments (Visa, Mastercard)
  • Debit cards (Maestro, Visa Electron)
  • Instant EFT
  • SiD Secure EFT
  • QR code payments
  • Apple Pay
  • Google Pay
  • Samsung Pay
  • Capitec Pay
  • Absa Pay
  • Mobicred
  • MoreTyme (by TymeBank)
  • Payflex
  • MukuruPay
  • MTN MoMoPay
  • SnapScan
  • Zapper
  • Scan to Pay
  • SCode
  • Store cards (RCS)
  • Visa Checkout
  • PayPal

Learn more about Payfast’s supported payment methods here »

While we try to keep this list updated to the best of our ability, payment methods and support tend to change from time to time. We’ve covered the highlights here, so for the most current options head over to the Payfast official website and check directly with Payfast.

Payment methods supported by Payfast

Charitable + Payfast Tutorial

Charitable Payfast tutorial

Learn how to boost your fundraising efforts by integrating Payfast with Charitable. This step-by-step guide will show you how to set up Payfast as a payment gateway, enable various payment methods, and configure options to maximize your nonprofit’s donation potential.

Other Gateways You Can Enable

Charitable works with a range of payment gateways, and you can enable more than one at a time. Plenty of organizations run a local gateway for donors close to home and a second one for everyone else, so nobody reaches your donation form and finds no way to give.

See every gateway you can enable to accept donations »

Frequently Asked Questions

See the list below for our most frequently asked questions. If your question is not listed here, please contact us.

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ambassadors New

🖨️ Introducing Fliers and Posters: Raise Money Away From the Screen!

A lot of peer-to-peer fundraising happens away from a screen: at the finish line of a 5K, on a school noticeboard, in an office kitchen. Charitable Ambassadors 3.4.7 adds 2 printables, a fundraiser flier carrying each fundraiser’s own story and QR code, and a recruitment poster that signs new fundraisers up. Both open as a normal web page and print straight from the browser. Why this is important:

  • 🏁 A flier for every fundraiser: Each one carries that fundraiser’s own photo, story and goal, with a QR code that opens their page rather than your main campaign.
  • 📌 A poster that recruits: It shows “Now Recruiting” above your campaign name with a large QR code that opens your sign-up form, so someone can start fundraising without waiting on a link from you.
  • 🪄 No design tool needed: Both printables render as a normal web page and print from the browser, with no PDF plugin and no designer.
  • 📄 2 flier layouts: Hand out carries the full story for giving to friends and family, and Post up carries a short hook with 5 tear-off tabs for a noticeboard.
  • 🛡️ Off until you switch it on: Fliers stay off after the update until you enable them under Charitable » Ambassadors » Other » Fliers, and only the owner or an administrator can open one.

Check out our announcement here.

Improvement Payments

💸 Introducing Tiered Rates for Fee Relief: Match the Ask to the Gift!

Fee Relief asks your donors one short question at checkout: would you like to cover the processing fee on this gift? Until now that question used a single rate for every donation on a gateway, so a $10 gift and a $500 gift were asked for the same percentage. Fee Relief 1.3.0 lets you set as many donation bands as you like, each carrying its own rate. Why this is important:

  • 🪙 Gentler on small gifts: A fixed transaction cost is a far bigger share of a $10 donation than a $500 one, so bands let you ask for less at the bottom.
  • 🎚️ As many bands as you need: Each band carries its own percentage and its own fixed amount, and the top band runs on with no upper limit.
  • 🛑 An optional ceiling: A Maximum fee field stops any donor being asked for more than a number you choose, however large the gift.
  • 🔌 Set per payment gateway: Stripe can run on four bands while Windcave and Payfast stay on a single rate, because bands belong to a gateway and not to your whole site.
  • 🛡️ Nothing changes until you say so: Your current rates stay exactly as they are until you switch Use Tiered Rates on under Charitable » Settings » Advanced » Fee Relief.

Check out our announcement here.

Donations Improvement

📊 Your Pro Dashboard Can Now Compare, Export, and Score!

Most fundraising dashboards only tell you how much you have raised. Charitable Pro 1.8.19 rebuilds the dashboard and the Reports Overview around the harder questions: whether anything is broken, whether this period beat the last one, and which single change would make the most difference today. Why this is important:

  • 📈 Every figure has a trend: Pick a period and the tiles and the chart move together, with each total shown against the previous period.
  • 🗓️ Charts that stay readable: Short ranges group donations day by day, while longer ranges group by week or month, so a full year reads as a curve instead of a flat line.
  • 🔀 Compare any 2 periods: Not just consecutive ones, so you can ask how this December did against last December. That matters because fundraising is seasonal.
  • 📤 Export the whole summary: Send the full overview out as CSV or PDF, ready for a board pack or a funder report.
  • 🎯 Score your setup for free: Have your fundraising setup scored, so the one change worth making next is the one you can see.

Check out our announcement here.

Feature New

🎟️ Introducing Charitable Events: Sell Tickets Inside Your Campaigns!

Most nonprofits sell event tickets in one tool and collect donations in another, which leaves two sets of reports and a manual match at the end of the year. Charitable Events brings both together, selling tickets through the same donation forms and payment gateways you already run in Charitable. Why this is important:

  • 🎟️ Every ticket is a donation: Ticket sales run through the gateway you already use and count toward the campaign goal, with everything managed under Charitable » Events.
  • 📱 QR check-in from any phone: Each attendee gets their own QR code on the receipt, and volunteers scan at the door through a check-in link that needs no WordPress account.
  • 🧾 Receipts ready for tax time: Give each ticket type a fair market value, and Charitable puts the correct tax-deductible amount on every donor receipt.
  • 📋 Attendee details at checkout: Ask every guest for a meal choice, shirt size, or access needs, with a separate attendee record created for each ticket.
  • 🗓️ Blocks and calendars included: Three editor blocks plus Sugar Calendar and The Events Calendar support put your events where supporters already look.

Check out our announcement here.

ai New

🚀 Unleash AI Power in Charitable!

Your AI assistant can now build, edit, and manage your Charitable fundraising campaigns directly — just by asking. With Charitable Pro adding write support for the WordPress Abilities API, tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor can handle full administrative actions safely through MCP. Why this is important:

  • 🤖 Campaign creation in plain language: Prompt your assistant with a goal like “Set up a fundraiser for the shelter with a $5,000 goal”, and it builds a real draft campaign complete with suggested donation tiers.
  • 🎨 Instant donation form tweaks: Add custom fields, change button colors, or reorder elements without diving into form settings.
  • 📝 Offline gift logging: Tell your assistant about cash or check gifts, and it will match donor emails and record transactions into your history.
  • 🛡️ Safety and control by default: Write access stays strictly off until turned on in Charitable » Tools » AI MCP, keeping read-only reporting safe by default.
  • 📜 Full audit logging: Every change made by an AI assistant is tracked under Charitable » Tools » Logs, so you always know who (or what) updated your site.

Check out our announcement here.