How to Accept Recurring Payments on Shopify Using PayFast in South Africa

The subscription-based model has become central to e-commerce businesses globally. The same is the case for merchants and customers in South Africa. Users want to subscribe to products or services once and continue receiving them over a predetermined period of time.

This means merchants now need a dedicated system that can support recurring payments and manage subscriptions automatically. Shopify merchants especially need such a system to smoothly run billing cycles and offer a seamless customer experience that gives them a consistent cash influx.

In South Africa, PayFast is one of the most trusted and widely used payment gateways used to pay for online purchases. So, Shopify merchants must tap into this potential to bring in more revenue.

There is one small catch: Shopify’s Subscription API doesn’t currently support PayFast as a payment gateway at checkout. What this means is that merchants cannot receive subscription payments made through PayFast.

That said, let’s now find out how merchants can overcome this shortcoming using solutions such as SubscriptionFlow, which enable Shopify stores to accept recurring payments routed through PayFast.

Understanding Recurring Billing in Ecommerce

Recurring billing means that customers are charged at preset intervals for the services they buy. It can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. And customers don’t need to manually re-enter payment info every billing cycle.

The best part? It makes the lives of merchants easier:

• They can easily predict revenue and build long-term growth plans for their businesses when the cash flow is steady and consistent.

• With automation, they no longer need to create manual invoices, send payment follow-ups to customers by hand, or keep records of bills on spreadsheets.

• Since customers don’t have to subscribe manually each billing cycle, they stay subscribed longer, thus improving their LTV (lifetime value).

Nonetheless, recurring billing can become a burden without automation. Merchants can end up:

• Charging customers by hand every billing cycle.

• Tracking subscription renewals in spreadsheets.

• Handling subscription changes by hand (plan changes, pauses, or skipped deliveries).

• Chasing customers to make timely payments or re-make failed payments.

Given these challenges, automating recurring billing and subscriptions becomes essential for Shopify businesses.

Shopify’s Native Recurring Billing System

Shopify has made a lot of progress in supporting subscription-based ecommerce. Merchants can now provide recurring products directly from their Shopify storefront with the Shopify Subscription API. Here’s what Shopify offers natively:

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• You can seamlessly set up subscription products in the admin panel.

• Native Shopify checkout helps customers make subscription payments without the need for third-party portals or checkouts.

• It enables customers to manage their own subscriptions, such that they can pause, skip, resume, or cancel their subscriptions.

Shopify’s recurring billing only works with payment gateways (such as Shopify Payments, Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.Net) that comply with Shopify’s Subscription API.

However, the real challenge lies for South African merchants, as Shopify’s Subscription API is not compatible with PayFast. It means that store owners are unable to charge their customers for subscriptions via PayFast. Even if the users find alternative ways to pay via PayFast manually, there’s no way to automate their renewal payments.

In simpler words, in Shopify you cannot manage recurring billing through PayFast. Hence, while Shopify supports recurring subscription payments, South African merchants relying on PayFast are left hanging.

What PayFast Offers

When it comes to paying online for subscriptions in South Africa, PayFast remains one of the most reliable and widely adopted payment gateways. It is built to meet the needs of local merchants and customers. Because of it, many businesses across e-commerce, SaaS, memberships, delivery services, and other digital platforms choose PayFast as a mode to make recurring payments.

PayFast offers merchants:

• High-level Security and Fraud Protection

It is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant with multiple fraud detection mechanisms, ensuring that each transaction is secure.

• Support for Multiple South African Payment Methods

Unlike most other payment gateways that are region-specific, PayFast accepts different payment types that South Africans use, which may include debit cards, credit cards, Mobicred, Instant EFT, etc. 

• Regional Stability and Legal Compliance

PayFast follows all the financial regulations of South Africa and is integrated well with the regional banking system. Thus, it helps merchants avoid compliance issues related to foreign payment processors. 

• ZAR Currency Support

PayFast enables payment processing in South African rand. This makes payment faster and also helps the merchant avoid any hidden conversion fee or exchange rate volatility.

Based on these strengths, it’s no surprise that merchants in South Africa prefer PayFast over other international payment gateways for their online Shopify stores.

The Shopify + PayFast Compatibility Gap

It may seem that Shopify and PayFast should work together without any friction because both support online purchases and are well-established platforms used heavily by South African e-commerce businesses. Customers making a single-time payment via PayFast may not face any issues.

However, the moment you try to sell subscriptions, the limitations of Shopify become crystal clear.

Shopify handles subscriptions via its Subscription API. The system manages recurring orders, renewals, billing schedules, pausing, skipping deliveries, updating payment methods, etc. But only a few payment gateways are compatible with its API, and unfortunately, PayFast is not one of them.

Because of this reason,

• Shopify is unable to automatically trigger the initial or any next charges via PayFast.
• No connection is built between the payment gateway and the ecommerce platform.
• If users choose to pay through PayFast using workarounds, changes made in Shopify to the subscription lifecycle won’t appear in PayFast billing.

Due to these limitations, merchants can only accept one-time payments using PayFast as their payment gateway for checkouts, and process payments in ZAR.

But they can’t enable recurring billing, automatic renewals, dunning, or payment retries when payments fail, and syncing of subscription statuses between Shopify and PayFast.

It means that the entire subscription management becomes manual for merchants, which can prove to be quite a headache when the customer base grows. It can lead to revenue slipping through your fingers.

Therefore, if you want predictable recurring revenue, automated billing, and a smooth customer experience, Shopify and PayFast need a bridge that can fill the gap between the platforms. This means you need a third-party subscription management solution like SubscriptionFlow to handle recurring billing via PayFast for you.

How SubscriptionFlow Bridges the Compatibility Gap

SubscriptionFlow acts as that missing link that is needed to connect Shopify to PayFast. It automates recurring billing without disturbing your existing storefront or your preferred way of payments.

The recurring subscription solution seamlessly connects with Shopify and fetches purchases and product details to manage billing operations, using PayFast to automatically process payments.

Thus, merchants don’t have to do recurring billing by hand, and workflows become seamless. For example, when a customer buys a subscription on a Shopify store, SubscriptionFlow receives and stores their subscription details (automating everything that Shopify cannot do natively), allowing customers to make recurring payments via PayFast securely.

Not only does SubscriptionFlow automate billing, it also improves the entire subscription journey.

Automated Recurring Payments

SubscriptionFlow ensures that customers are billed on time, i.e., on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or any custom plan they choose.

Complete Subscription Lifecycle Management

With SubscriptionFlow, subscribers can easily pause, resume, cancel, or skip their subscriptions. They can also update their payment methods and change subscription plans all by themselves, without seeking the assistance of the support team.

Dunning & Failed Payment Recovery

SubscriptionFlow automatically sends failed payment reminders to customers with its smart dunning and recovery logic, helping you prevent any revenue leakages.

Custom Billing Cycles & Plan Flexibility

SubscriptionFlow supports any type of billing model, be it usage-based, tiered, SaaS access, memberships, or hybrid products.

Real-time Visibility and Analytics

You also get real-time visibility into key metrics like MRR, churn rate, future renewals, subscriber growth, and recurring revenue performance with the platform.

This makes SubscriptionFlow vital for Shopify merchants using PayFast as a payment gateway, because without these features, they would have to choose between losing automation, losing PayFast, or losing the opportunity to scale their business in South Africa.

With SubscriptionFlow, they do not have to compromise on any of these, as they can easily accept recurring payments via PayFast for their Shopify stores automatically.

Who This Setup Is Ideal For

Brands whose customers are repeat buyers or consume products and services over time require a model that meets their recurring billing and subscription needs. In such scenarios, Shopify, SubscriptionFlow, and PayFast integration makes South African merchants’ lives easier by automating recurring billing and offering a trusted local payment gateway.

Here are a few businesses that most benefit from this setup:

Subscription Box Brands

Subscription box brands thrive on recurring deliveries, whether it’s baby products, grooming kits, coffee, pet supplies, or beauty products. For them, an automated recurring system ensures that renewals happen on time without manual intervention.

Meal Kits, Food Delivery & Grocery Subscriptions

Stores that make weekly or monthly deliveries of meal kits, fresh produce, or specialty foods need strict billing consistency. One missed renewal can cost you your valuable customer. Therefore, automated billing via SubscriptionFlow and PayFast ensures that recurring deliveries go through without any delay.

SaaS & Digital Products

Similarly, software subscriptions, media platforms, digital tools, and premium content creators also depend on monthly or annual billing. For them, SubscriptionFlow automates renewals and dunning to avoid churn even when customers update payment details or their card information.

Fitness, Coaching & Wellness Programs

Likewise, online fitness plans, yoga studios, online coaching, and other such platforms rely on recurring memberships and program cycles. Automation lets customers manage their own plans, helping reduce cancellations and any unnecessary manual input.

Conclusion

Recurring billing doesn’t have to be complex for Shopify merchants in South Africa. Even though Shopify doesn’t support recurring payments via PayFast natively, solutions like SubscriptionFlow remove any hurdles in the way by automating billing operations for you.