Paystack vs Payfast for invoicing

Neither charges a monthly subscription, so the comparison comes down to what each takes per transaction. All figures below are as of 2026 — verify on each provider's pricing page before committing, because rates move and both offer volume discounts.

Paystack's published South African pricing is 2.9% + R1.00 (VAT exclusive) for local cards, 3.1% + R1.00 for international cards, and 2% for EFT. Payfast's standard small-business rate is widely reported at around 3.5% + R2.00 for Visa and Mastercard, with American Express around 4.5% + R2.00. Payfast also charges a payout fee of roughly R10 when you withdraw from your Payfast wallet to your bank, and a small fee on instant refunds.

On typical invoice amounts, Paystack works out cheaper. A R1,000 invoice costs about R30 through Paystack versus about R37 through Payfast. A R10,000 invoice is roughly R291 versus about R352. Across a hundred R5,000 invoices a year that gap is around R3,000 — not life-changing, but not nothing either.

One structural difference matters more than the headline rate: Payfast's wallet-and-payout model means money lands in a Payfast wallet that you withdraw from, with a fee each time. Paystack settles to your bank on a schedule. If you're invoicing rather than running a store, the settle-automatically model is usually less admin.

Payfast is the incumbent. It's been the default South African payment gateway for years, it's deeply integrated into local e-commerce platforms, and it supports payment methods South Africans recognise beyond cards — instant EFT, Mobicred, SnapScan and similar. If you're running an online store and want to accept the widest range of local payment methods, that breadth is a genuine advantage.

Paystack came from Nigeria, was acquired by Stripe in 2020, and expanded into South Africa. Its centre of gravity is developers and APIs. The documentation is unusually good, the API is clean, and the dashboard is modern. It's card-first, with EFT available, and doesn't try to cover every alternative local payment method.

For invoicing, that difference in origin matters less than you'd think, because an invoice payment is a much narrower problem than a store checkout. You need one link, one card payment, and a reliable webhook telling your system it succeeded. Both do that. Paystack's API quality makes it the easier one to integrate correctly, which is why it's what Platybooks connects to.

For invoice payments, Paystack has the edge on the two things that actually matter: it's cheaper per transaction, and it settles directly to your bank rather than to a wallet you have to withdraw from.

The payment-method breadth that makes Payfast strong for e-commerce is worth less on an invoice. Your client is a business paying a bill, and they'll either use a card or do an EFT directly to you — they're not reaching for Mobicred to settle a R12,000 consulting invoice. So you're paying Payfast's higher rate for options your clients won't use.

The honest counter-argument: if you already have Payfast wired into an online store, adding a second gateway just for invoices is added admin for a saving of a few rand per transaction. In that case, stay where you are. The gateway you have working beats the marginally cheaper one you haven't set up.

The other consideration is what your invoicing software supports. A gateway your tool doesn't integrate with means building the integration yourself — webhooks, signature verification, reconciliation, refunds — and that is not a weekend project you want.

Platybooks connects to Paystack for South African card payments. You add your bank details under Settings, in the "Getting paid" card, and payments settle into your own account — the money never routes through us.

In practice: your invoice carries a Pay button, your client clicks it and pays by card in rand on Paystack's hosted checkout, and the moment the payment succeeds the invoice marks itself paid, a receipt emails automatically, and reminders stop chasing it. Refunds are issued from the invoice and go back through Paystack. Card details never touch Platybooks — the client enters them on Paystack's page, which keeps you out of PCI scope.

Payment links are available on Starter and above. If you'd rather keep taking EFT, manual payment recording works on every plan including Free — you record what landed, and the invoice reconciles exactly the same way.