Choosing and integrating, explained
Guides that resolve to a number.
Plain answers to the questions merchants actually ask: what Stripe costs to work around, whether EFT beats cards, and how to get paid from abroad without losing a fortune to fees.
BNPL in South Africa: Payflex, PayJustNow, Float and Happy Pay
Who each buy-now-pay-later provider suits, the merchant-fee trade-off, and how BNPL lifts conversion on larger baskets.
Can you use Stripe in South Africa? The honest answer
Why an SA-registered business cannot onboard to Stripe directly, what Paystack gives you instead, and when a foreign entity is worth the exchange-control cost.
Instant EFT vs cards: which is actually cheaper?
Where pay-by-bank wins on fees and chargebacks, where it loses on conversion, and why most SA stores end up running both.
Shopify Payments is not in SA: what it really costs
The extra platform fee Shopify charges when you cannot use Shopify Payments, how it stacks on top of your gateway, and how to price around it.
Webhooks that survive load-shedding
Signed webhooks, idempotency keys and retry queues so a power or network outage never drops a paid order.
Getting paid by overseas clients: Wise, Payoneer or PayPal
What each service really costs to receive foreign currency and convert it to rand, and which currency to invoice in.
Selling SaaS globally from SA: Paystack plus a Merchant of Record
The 2026 standard stack for tax-handled USD and EUR checkout from South Africa, with no foreign entity.
How to verify a gateway's real fees
Reading a pricing page past the headline rate: payout fees, refund retention, settlement lag and the lines that do not make the marketing.
These guides are being written this pass, so several are short and marked in progress. Every figure that appears in one carries the date we verified it, and where the research is thin we say so rather than quoting a number we cannot source. Numbers live in the calculator and the compare table.