PayFast is ending BTC support

[IOPS]

At PayFast, we’re constantly striving to extend our merchants’ reach by offering innovative payment solutions. Our pioneering culture led to PayFast being the first (and only) South African payment gateway to make Bitcoin available as a revolutionary, new payment method.

Unfortunately there are a number of limitations and design flaws unique to Bitcoin that make it an impractical substitute for cash, including high transaction fees and long confirmation times for buyers. We’ve tried various ways to mitigate these problems, but unfortunately, these issues are fundamental. The resultant poor user experience has led us to re-evaluate Bitcoin as a payment method on our platform and a decision has been taken to discontinue support for Bitcoin from midnight 20 July 2019.

https://www.payfast.co.za/2019/07/12/ending-support-for-bitcoin/

 

[BitcoinZAR]

That sucks.

 

[saor]

Wonder why they don't use eth instead.

 

[BitcoinZAR]

If anyone wants to accept bitcoin as a method of payment direct to your own wallet that you have the private key for, I can help you set it up. Zero processing fees, bitcoin goes direct to your wallet, customer pays only network fee, each payment has a unique address.
Read more here: https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/accept-bitcoin-on-your-website-in-south-africa/

You dont need payfast if you want to hold bitcoin, and if you want Rand instead, just sent it to an exchange and sell it for max 1% fee. Payfast was charging higher than that.

 

[Bryn]

That sucks.

Does it though? My biggest client uses PayFast and manual EFT as the payment methods for their online store, and as admin I have access to the account. There has not been a single Bitcoin payment ever, across thousands of payments processed through PayFast.

The number of people who prefer to pay with Bitcoin must be vanishingly low, and even then they can likely make do just fine with credit card, debit card, cheque card, Mobicred, Instant EFT, Zapper and manual EFT support. It surely doesn't make sense for PayFast to bother with Bitcoin anymore.

If anyone wants to accept bitcoin as a method of payment direct to your own wallet that you have the private key for, I can help you set it up. Zero processing fees, bitcoin goes direct to your wallet, customer pays only network fee, each payment has a unique address.
Read more here: https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/accept-bitcoin-on-your-website-in-south-africa/

You dont need payfast if you want to hold bitcoin, and if you want Rand instead, just sent it to an exchange and sell it for max 1% fee. Payfast was charging higher than that.

PayFast had the enormous benefit of not needing to lift a finger though. The money just came in like any other payment, and at the same low 2% fee as something like Instant EFT.

Or at least, that's how it would work if anyone ever paid using Bitcoin.

 

[saor]

Does it though?

It sucks if you want to spend BTC locally and the place you usually spend it no longer accepts it.

 

[John Tempus]

It is simple, they are not seeing enough users to maintain crypto support. The excuses they make here is all just to save face.

Fact of the matter they could avoid any of these "high fees" or "slow transactions" by actually following through with luno partnership by instructing users to actually fund a luno account and pay from that directly. This would allow zero confirmations instant conversion with no slippage delays.

It is not the ideal use case for crypto but anyone who wants to pay with payfast would at least be able to and payfast would have no delays in confirmation these payments.

If anyone wants to accept bitcoin as a method of payment direct to your own wallet that you have the private key for, I can help you set it up. Zero processing fees, bitcoin goes direct to your wallet, customer pays only network fee, each payment has a unique address.
Read more here: https://www.bitcoinzar.co.za/accept-bitcoin-on-your-website-in-south-africa/

You dont need payfast if you want to hold bitcoin, and if you want Rand instead, just sent it to an exchange and sell it for max 1% fee. Payfast was charging higher than that.

I think you miss the entire point. Payfast never dealt with BTC, it was always instantly sold for ZAR at luno so any solution that would cause payfast to hold onto BTC is not something they would ever be interested in.