Appalling experience with PayFast

I signed up for a merchant account to receive credit card payments internationally. I sent an email payment request and my client was given the error message that their country was disallowed.

I went into my settings and added the country manually. I recreated the request, they tried again and got the same error.

I contacted PayFast and they said that they had to enable all countries on their side, and that I couldn't do it in my settings. They assured me this would solve the problem.

I recreated the payment request again, and the client's payment was rejected again. This time they got a notification from their bank - it seems the payment went through and was reversed. They spent an hour on the phone to their bank and were then cut off, so we don't know anything more about the reason.

I followed up on the support ticket and was told that the funds had been reversed with error code 49, with no further explanation. The ticket was closed and marked as resolved, which it clearly isn’t.

Why would I sign up for a service that claims to accept international payments via credit card, when apparently they are not accepted by default? I had to ask PayFast for countries to be added. There is no warning about this.

As I’ve had no resolution or explanation, I can’t ask my client to try again and further waste their time.

I am deeply embarrassed by this, as it has created a very unprofessional impression of me and my business.