PayFast

PayFast Notifications API

Validate ITN (Instant Transaction Notification) webhooks

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OpenAPI Specification

openapi: 3.1.0
info:
  title: PayFast Credit Card Transactions Notifications API
  description: 'South African payment gateway providing REST APIs for online payment processing, subscription billing, tokenized recurring card payments, onsite checkout, and merchant refunds. Trusted by 80,000+ South African businesses and certified PCI-DSS Level 1.

    '
  version: v1
  contact:
    name: PayFast Developer Support
    url: https://support.payfast.help
  license:
    name: Proprietary
    url: https://payfast.io
servers:
- url: https://api.payfast.co.za/v1
  description: Production API server
- url: https://sandbox.payfast.co.za/v1
  description: Sandbox / test server
security:
- merchantAuth: []
tags:
- name: Notifications
  description: Validate ITN (Instant Transaction Notification) webhooks
paths:
  /eng/query/validate:
    post:
      operationId: validateITN
      summary: Validate Instant Transaction Notification (ITN)
      description: 'Server-to-server validation call to confirm that an Instant Transaction Notification (webhook) from PayFast is genuine. Returns "VALID" or "INVALID".

        '
      tags:
      - Notifications
      servers:
      - url: https://www.payfast.co.za
        description: Production
      - url: https://sandbox.payfast.co.za
        description: Sandbox
      requestBody:
        required: true
        content:
          application/x-www-form-urlencoded:
            schema:
              type: object
              description: The ITN parameter string received in the notification POST
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Validation result
          content:
            text/plain:
              schema:
                type: string
                enum:
                - VALID
                - INVALID
components:
  securitySchemes:
    merchantAuth:
      type: apiKey
      in: header
      name: merchant-id
      description: 'PayFast API authentication uses an MD5 signature derived from the merchant ID, passphrase, timestamp, and request data. Required headers include merchant-id, version, timestamp, and signature.

        '