paygate.co.za no longer exists as its own site. It redirects to Payfast, and PayGate is now the enterprise gateway product inside Payfast by Network. So the support you are looking for is Payfast support, and the numbers below are the live ones.
Payfast contact details, which cover PayGate
- Contact centre: 021 300 4455, or +27 21 300 4455 from outside South Africa
- Compliments and feedback: [email protected]
- Help Centre and knowledge base: support.payfast.help
- Developer documentation: developers.payfast.co.za
- A chatbot sits at the bottom right of the site for immediate help
Note the mailbox domain: network.global, not payfast.io or paygate.co.za. Payfast is part of Network International, which is why the corporate domain shows up in the address.
Operating hours
- Monday to Friday: 08:00 to 18:00 (GMT+2)
- Saturday: 08:00 to 14:00
- Closed Sundays and public holidays, and email support does not run on those days either
Saturday cover to 14:00 is unusual for a payments business and worth knowing if a weekend checkout is failing.
Use the right option on the enquiry form
The contact form makes you pick one of Merchant Support, Sales, Integration Support, Log a Complaint or Other, and it accepts attachments up to 5MB in jpg, jpeg or png. Integration Support and Merchant Support are different queues: a failing API call is Integration Support, a payout that has not arrived is Merchant Support. A screenshot of the actual error, attached, will save you a round trip.
PayGate and Payfast are two different products
This is the distinction that decides which documentation applies to you. Payfast is the aggregator: plug-and-play integration, net settlement roughly every 48 hours, immediate transacting on card and Instant EFT, aimed at small and medium businesses. PayGate is the gateway: onboarding runs through your bank rather than through Payfast, settlement is real-time gross, and non-redirect integration is available for merchants who are PCI compliant themselves. It is aimed at enterprise and complex integrations, including travel and hospitality booking engines.
- The PayGate integration products are Payweb, a hosted payment page, and Payhost, the enterprise API.
- Because gateway onboarding is bank dependent, a delay in going live is often at the acquiring bank rather than at Payfast — ask which side the file is sitting on.
- Payfast describes the gateway as acquirer agnostic across the major South African institutions.
Have this ready before you phone
- Your merchant ID, and the payment reference or transaction ID for the specific payment.
- The date, time and amount, and whether it was card or EFT.
- Whether you are the merchant or the shopper — a shopper query about a payment made to a store is usually resolved by the store, since the merchant holds the order.
If a complaint is not resolved
Use the Log a Complaint option rather than a general enquiry, so it is recorded as one, and keep the reference. A payment services dispute you cannot settle can be taken to the National Financial Ombud Scheme, and an unauthorised card transaction should also be reported to your own bank straight away, because the chargeback window is short.