Before PayFast integrated into Shopify, it was almost impossible for South African merchants to accept credit cards on their store and our Shopify merchants were limited to setting up manual payment methods to take orders. Now that PayFast is available, a whole new world of payment methods is available to all South African merchants.
Among others, PayFast allows you to accept BitCoin, Instant EFT and even Mobicred, a cool new online credit facility, really easily in your Shopify store.
Offering only one payment method on your Shopify store is something that most merchants overlook though, often to the detriment of their bottom line.
The best piece of general advice I can offer any online merchant is to look at your store through the eyes of a customer. As a customer, would you like to be presented with only one payment method? What if your customer doesn’t like paying by credit card and feels safer transferring the money directly into your account? If you don’t offer EFT as a payment method, then chances are your customer will simply leave your site and you’ll lose that sale.
My advice is, always offer as many payment methods as possible so your customer has as little reason to leave the transaction as possible. Take a look at all the big online players in SA, they all accept at least 4 payment methods. Everything from SnapScan to eBucks. They do that for a reason.
While PayFast does accept multiple payment methods, make sure your customer knows that they have a number of ways to pay you right from within your checkout.
You should instantly start seeing people using those payment methods and while the vast majority of customers will probably use PayFast to pay you for their orders, the fact that you offer another payment method simply means that you won’t lose the other sales.
Also, make sure to create a page called ‘Payment methods’ or something similar, so that people can read up about what payment methods you accept BEFORE they start transacting with you. There is nothing more frustrating than loving a product and going all the way to checkout, only to realise that you can’t pay for it like you wanted to. That will only leave a bad taste in your customer’s mouth.
Check out the Shopify Manual article that will explain exactly how to set up manual payment methods.
For more info on payments through PayFast, email support@payfast.co.za, or get in touch with Shopify Support to learn more about adding other payment methods.
