This has been one of the biggest (and most requested) updates on the PayFast engine for a while: the removal of buyer registration.
https://vimeo.com/100158835
Historically, when a buyer made a payment using PayFast, the payment flow went:
- Buyer finds products/services on seller’s site and initiates payment process
- Buyer gets redirected to the PayFast payment engine
- Buyer is required to enter a password (creating a PayFast Basic account)
- Buyer makes successful payment and gets redirected back to the seller’s site
By removing step number three (in the list above), we are expecting to see an increase in successful payment transactions.
So, from now on then for:
Existing buyers
All buyers with existing/active accounts (those who have paid with PayFast before), will be emailed and asked if they want to keep their PayFast “Basic” account (they can opt-in, should they choose to do so). Some buyers might find it convenient to have an account (to make payments from, that is), as they can securely save their credit card information to the account, speeding up the payment process. Those who don’t opt-in to keep their PayFast account, will have their account removed and have the same payment flow as first-time buyers.
New/future buyers
There will be no password requirement when paying with PayFast. A link will be shown in the small print at the bottom of the PayFast engine to create an (optional) account, for those who want to opt-in and have their card numbers saved. This is applicable to all email addresses which have not been registered with PayFast before.
So in short we’re now catering to everyone: those who prefer to just make a payment without creating a PayFast account, those who prefer to create an account and save their card details and those who might want to use PayFast a few times and then maybe create an account at some stage in the future.
We’re happy to –hot on the heels of our new payment engine redesign– roll out yet another big user-experience upgrade, helping our sellers to get paid, faster.
Any questions? Reach out to our friendly Support Team.
Awesome news. Will make life a lot easier.
Thanks, making it easier to receive payment is a small change but a giant leap forward.
How does this work with Instant EFT now? Is the reference unique per transaction? Also, when will it be implemented, as I see it still asks for registration.
Hey Steven,
Instant EFT will work as normal; the reference is unique per buyer (and checked for transaction & amount after they’ve made the EFT).
Also, this has already been implemented. The password will stay in place for those with a receiving account or a positive balance (usually sellers) and for those who opt-in to keep their account…but if you use it right now with a new email address, it won’t ask for a password 😉
Cheers!
Hallelujah!
Payfast, Great move.
As someone who uses various forms of eCommerce for many years, this is simply another great reason to stick with you guys and to have confidence that you have our best interest in mind!
Thanks for the great work guys, we do appreciate it!
About bloomin’ time. It was the ONE reason I was not using you guys on my web site. Now, I am happy to reconsider.
I’m really glad I caught this blog post. Pay fast is back on the table for our clients!
This is excellent, awesome, great news !!!. Thanx a million, this will most certainly improve our sales.
Thank you to the PayFast team for the great service you offer!
This is great.
Do we need to update ZenCart plugins to get this going or just stay as is?
Hey Gavin, thanks for the feedback and no, nothing is needed to be done on your behalf 🙂
It does not work for the scenario where an existing account holder does not close his account, and chooses the “I will decide later” option in the payment GUI. In that case he is still forced to provide his password. Especially relevant for cases where a user has forgotten his password, or does not want to use the linked credit card. They just want to do a quick transaction without any login hassles – in that case it is not very user friendly
Also if the developer provides the email_address field of the payer in the Post, then you get to the scenario where you do not even have the dropdown to select an option. Under that scenario you are completely locked into providing the password, which si not acceptable – see my previious post. That is probably why Woocommerce commented out the line to provide the email address to Payfast in their payfast.class.php. There must be an workaround for this ….
Hey Brendan, thanks for the feedback!
We only give those with accounts three options: to have their account removed, to not have it removed or to decide later what to do with it. It does mean that they need to enter their password (or have it reset if they forgot it).
Thanks again for the comments; we’ll definitely consider them when we do review of that part of the payments engine!
Hi Brendan,
I’ve replied via email and I wanted to just leave an answer here as well. Using a pre-removal basic account still requires us to validate the buyer, which is done via the password. It is also possible that the account may have funds in its wallet which should only be used by the correct buyer.
I will discuss the UX of this whole process with the team hear and see what we can do to improve it.