Sofort

Sofort is a real-time bank transfer method that operates in Germany, Austria, The Netherlands and Belgium. When selecting Sofort, customers will be prompted to select their bank and then to sign in to their online banking account. After reviewing the pre-filled payment details, they can agree to the payment, before being redirected back to your website. Once completed, you will receive confirmation via a URL notification.

Features

Supported customer countries	AT, BE, CH, DE, ES, IT, NL, PL
Supported currencies	EUR
Protect Plus	Supported.
Refunds	Full and partial refunds supported (permitted for up to 365 days).
Chargebacks	Payments are not subject to chargebacks.

Configuration

To enable this payment method on your account, please get in touch with your account manager.
A test sandbox account will be provided, which you will need when testing your implementation.

Modify your POST to Payment Pages as needed:

 

Field name	Required by PPg	Required in POST	Description
bankid	No	No	The customer’s Bank Identification Code (BIC).
billingcountryiso2a	Yes	No	The country entered for the billing address, using ISO2A format.
billingfirstname	Yes	No	The billing first name.
billinglastname	Yes	No	The billing last name.
ruleidentifier	No	No	If your POST to the Payment Pages already includes all fields required by the payment method, you can streamline the checkout process for the customer by also submitting ruleidentifier=STR-14.   This allows the customer’s browser to immediately go to the pages hosted by the payment method to complete the transaction. (We refer to this as Workflow C)   Click here to learn about different workflows.

Notifications

Once a payment has been authorised, funds will be settled at a later time, as determined by Sofort.

The settlement notification may not be sent immediately after processing the payment.

In the unlikely event that payment is still pending settlement after 7 days (settlestatus “10”), this will be scheduled for investigation and we will contact you with further information.

Before you begin testing, we recommend that you contact our Support team and request that rules are enabled on your account, which submit URL notifications to your system in the following scenarios:

• When a payment is authorised.
• When funds have been settled.

Configuring the authorisation notification

We recommend including at least the following fields in your authorisation notification:

• Acquirer Response Message (acquirerresponsemessage)
• Base Amount (baseamount) (e.g. £10.50 is “1050”)*
• Main Amount (mainamount) (e.g. £10.50 is “10.50”)*
• Billing Country (billingcountryiso2a)
• Currency (currencyiso3a)
• Error Code (errorcode)
• Live Status (livestatus)
• Order Reference (orderreference)
• Payment Type (paymenttypedescription)
• Request Type (requesttypedescription)
• Settle Status (settlestatus)
• Site Reference (sitereference)
• Transaction Reference (transactionreference)
• Transaction Started Timestamp (transactionstartedtimestamp)

*Please choose your preferred format.

Configuring the settlement notification

We recommend including the following fields in your settlement notification:

• Settle Status (settlestatus)
• Site Reference (sitereference)
• Transaction Reference (transactionreference)

Check the notification

You will need to check the contents of each notification received and respond accordingly by following the processes outlined in the “URL notifications” section of our Action types page. In particular, you will need to look at the updated settlestatus value:

• On authorisation: If the settlestatus is “0”, “1” or “10”, the payment has been authorised and you are not required to take further action at this time. However, values of “2” or “3” indicate funds are not scheduled for settlement (suspended and cancelled, respectively).
• On settlement: If the settlestatus has been updated to “100”, this indicates that the funds have been settled. Alternatively, if this has been updated to “3”, this indicates there has been a problem and the payment was subsequently cancelled.

Cancelled transactions (settlestatus “3”) may be settled at a later time. In situations where the customer has completed the steps required to fulfil the payment, the settlestatus is updated to “100” to indicate the funds have been transferred to your account.

 

If you have contacted the Support Team to configure settlement notifications (as described above), you will be notified when this occurs.

Testing

You will need to test your solution before you can begin processing live payments. Test transactions are processed through your test Site Reference.

Requirements

You will need to contact our Support team, providing your Sofort test account details. We will then configure your test site reference to connect directly to the Sofort testing environment.

When performing test transactions, your browser will be redirected to the Sofort testing environment to simulate a payment. Other than this, the process will be exactly the same as processing live payments.

Refunds

After processing a payment, it is possible to refund the customer using MyST.

Refunds for Sofort are settled immediately (settlestatus “100”).

Requirements

• You cannot refund a payment until the AUTH has been settled (settlestatus is “100”).
• You cannot refund a greater amount than was originally settled.