Studios and independent dancers can pay their entry and registration fee balances online with a card or instant EFT. Payments go directly to your PayFast account. Kompdesk never holds the money. Each successful payment lands automatically as a payment record on the payer's fee row, exactly like a manually recorded EFT.
Online payment is additive: your payment instructions (bank details for EFT and so on) stay available to payers at all times.
The same PayFast account is also where families pay for event media sold per item.
Enabling It
- Open your event editor and go to Payment Details.
- In the Online fee payments panel, add your PayFast merchant details with Edit PayFast details if you have not already. These are the same credentials used for ticket sales: Merchant ID, Merchant Key, and the Security Passphrase from your PayFast dashboard. Saving runs a live verification against PayFast.
- Switch on Accept entry fee payments online with PayFast.
Requirements:
- PayFast settles in South African Rand. If your event's fee currency is something else, set a ZAR exchange rate in the same panel: the number of Rands one unit of your currency is worth. Fees are converted at that rate before a card is charged, and the payment is credited to the payer's account in your event's currency. The toggle stays disabled until a rate is set.
- The rate is saved against each payment as it starts, so changing it later never alters a payment already in progress. Exchange rates move, so review yours from time to time. Kompdesk warns you when it has not been updated in 30 days.
- Payments below R 5.00 cannot be made online (PayFast's card minimum). This applies to the converted Rand figure, so a small balance in a stronger currency is usually fine. Payers with tiny balances are asked to pay you directly.
Payers then see a Pay Now with PayFast card on their Fees page. They can pay the full balance or a smaller amount of their choice (minimum R 5.00); partial payments show as Partially Paid until settled.
Watching Payments Come In
On the Entry Fees screen:
- Successful payments appear automatically in Amount Collected and each row's Paid column, with a PayFast badge in the payment history.
- The Online payments panel lists every online payment attempt with its status: Pending (payer has not completed payment yet), Paid, or Cancelled.
- You receive an email for each payment received.
You do not need to do anything for a normal payment. It records itself.
Reconciling a Stuck Payment
Occasionally a payer completes payment at PayFast but the confirmation never reaches Kompdesk (a network hiccup on PayFast's side). The order then sits as Pending while the money is already in your account.
- Verify the payment in your PayFast dashboard and copy its Payment ID.
- In the Online payments panel, click Reconcile PayFast on the pending row.
- Paste the Payment ID and confirm. The payment records exactly as if the confirmation had arrived.
If a payment completes for an order that was already Cancelled, you will get an alert email. In that case record the payment manually with Record Payment, using the PayFast Payment ID as the reference.
Abandoned pending payments (older than a day) are tidied up automatically. They hold nothing and cost nothing.
Test Mode (Sandbox)
Test mode lets you try the whole flow without moving real money. While it is on:
- Payers see a clear warning that payments will not move real money.
- Any test payments are permanently labelled SANDBOX in the payment history, so you can spot and remove the credits afterwards.
Use PayFast's sandbox credentials (merchant ID 10000100, key 46f0cd694581a) and test card 4000 0000 0000 0002. Switch test mode off before real payers pay.
Multi-Currency Pricing at PayFast
PayFast's own Multi-Currency Pricing feature is separate from your event's currency, and the two work together fine. Multi-Currency Pricing lets an international buyer see and pay in their own currency at the PayFast checkout; PayFast converts it and still settles Rand into your account. Kompdesk always sends PayFast a Rand amount, so turning it on is safe and makes international payers more comfortable.
What Kompdesk expects back is always the Rand figure it asked for. If a confirmation comes back with a different amount, the payment is NOT credited automatically: you get an alert and resolve it with Reconcile, having checked the payment in your PayFast dashboard first.
Accepting International Payers
PayFast accepts Visa and Mastercard issued anywhere in the world, so studios and dancers outside South Africa can pay without anything extra on your side. Two things worth telling them:
- Their bank may add its own currency conversion on top of PayFast's.
- If they would rather pay from a PayPal account, you can also offer PayPal. See PayPal for Entry Fees and Tickets.