Heratio Help Center article. Category: Marketplace.

Marketplace — Payments & Payouts

How money flows in the Heratio Marketplace: from buyer card to PayFast, into a held escrow, out to seller bank accounts on payout day.

Payment provider — PayFast

The marketplace integrates PayFast as its sole payment processor. Heratio never stores card details: the buyer is redirected to PayFast for entry, and the result is verified server-to-server.

Three things have to be configured in /admin/marketplace/settings:

The site URL must be HTTPS in production — PayFast refuses ITN webhooks to plain HTTP.

Buyer flow — what happens at checkout

1. Buyer clicks Buy Now / completes an accepted offer / wins an auction.
2. The marketplace creates a transaction in pending_payment.
3. Buyer is redirected to PayFast's hosted payment page.
4. Buyer pays — card, EFT, Snapscan, etc. (PayFast's choice).
5. PayFast posts an ITN (Instant Transaction Notification) to:

   POST /marketplace/payfast/notify
   

6. The handler:
   • Verifies the signature (HMAC of submitted fields + passphrase).
   • Checks the request came from a known PayFast IP block.
   • Performs a server-to-server validate call back to PayFast (defence in depth).
   • On success, transaction → paid.
7. Buyer is redirected to /marketplace/payment/return (success) or /marketplace/payment/cancel (cancelled).

The transaction is now visible to both parties — buyer at My Purchases, seller at My Transactions.

Escrow window

After a successful payment, funds are held by the operator (not transferred to the seller yet). This gives the buyer a window to dispute non-delivery, wrong item, etc.

The transaction's payout-eligible-from date = paid_at + escrow_days. Until that date, the seller's payout balance shows the amount as pending.

Seller payouts

When a transaction passes its escrow window with no open dispute, its amount moves from pending to available in the seller's payout balance.

Self-service view

• /marketplace/seller/payouts — every payout you've received with batch reference, amount, and the underlying transactions.

Operator-driven batching

Payouts are released by the operator running the batch payout action:

POST /admin/marketplace/payouts-batch

This iterates every seller with a positive available balance and produces:

1. A marketplace_payout_batch row with a unique reference.
2. One marketplace_payout row per seller in the batch.
3. A CSV/PDF download for the operator's bank to process.
4. An email to each seller with the reference and the underlying transactions.

Heratio does not initiate bank transfers automatically — the CSV is processed by the operator's banking facility (PayFast Pay-Outs, EFT export, or manual). The operator marks the payout as paid when the bank confirms; that flips the seller's balance from available to paid out.

Refunds & disputes

There is no "refund" button in Heratio's UI — refunds are processed manually by the operator:

1. Buyer raises a dispute via the seller's contact form / enquiry.
2. If unresolved, buyer emails the operator (admin contact).
3. Operator reviews the transaction at /admin/marketplace/transactions.
4. If a refund is granted before payout, the operator simply does not release the funds and uses PayFast's refund API.
5. If a refund is granted after payout, the operator deducts from the seller's next payout (or recovers via separate billing).

Configure the operator contact and the dispute SLA in /admin/marketplace/settings.

Currencies

The site primary currency is set in /admin/marketplace/settings. Additional currencies are configured in /admin/marketplace/currencies with:

• ISO code (ZAR, USD, EUR, GBP, etc.)
• Display symbol
• Active / inactive flag
• FX rate (manual or fed by a scheduled task)

Sellers pick from active currencies on the listing form. Buyers see prices converted to their preferred currency on Browse, but pay in the listing's currency at checkout — Heratio does not do live FX at the checkout stage.

Reports

Operators have read-only financial reports at /admin/marketplace/reports:

Each report exports as CSV.

See also

• Marketplace — Admin Operations
• Marketplace — Seller Quick Start
• Marketplace — Buyer Quick Start