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Closed Public Technical Support / Bugs Ticket #592

Payfast payment 4.0.1

This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Conversation

graeme colston

Hi Guys, I am getting an error after being re-directected to Payfast, googling the error gives this:
The error "Amount must be a valid payment amount" in PayFast means the transaction value isn't recognized as a real number(like 0.00, 50, 12.99) but might be text, missing, negative, zero, or formatted incorrectly (e.g., with currency symbols) when sent to PayFast, usually from your website/integration; check your code for correct amount passing, ensure it's numeric, not empty, and matches expected format, or clear browser cache if a user input issue.

Included is a screenshot of the error page.

Attachments

Screenshot 2025-12-05 at 14.31.56.png
Olivier Buisard Staff

Hello Graeme,

by looking at the code, it looks like the amount is being sent with the currency symbol.

Can you set the plugin's debug parameter to 'yes' and check the log file (it will be in the site's /cache)?

Olivier.

Olivier Buisard Staff

Any log info in the /cache folder? Any error in the browser console?

Olivier.

graeme colston

Where will I find the cache folder?, no error in browser, just rolling back to Step 1 of checkout

Olivier Buisard Staff

On your server, public root folder /cache.

Olivier.

Olivier Buisard Staff

Ok, thanks.

com_j2store is normal.

Ok, if nothing comes out on your end, I will check what I can do on mine.

 

Olivier.

graeme colston

Appreciate it, this sit has not had a sale since September, usually regular orders, nothing tsince the upgrade from joomla 3.

 

Olivier Buisard Staff

I am surprised you did not get the error until now.

In any case, I checked the amount on a transaction on my test site, and there is no currency symbol, just an amount value. The amount value may not have a decimal value, so I made sure there is one.

Can you try the plugin on your end and see if the transactions go through?

I have it attached. Unzip it first and install the included file.

Attachments

plg_j2store_payment_payfast_UNZIPFIRST.zip

Olivier.

Olivier Buisard Staff

Hummm, not sure what to do at this point as I followed information at Payfast and our data is sent to Payfast similarly to the way they show in their videos.

I cannot access your console as you have a firewall setup.Any way to access it? Thanks.

Olivier.

graeme colston

Hi Olivier, password for RS firewall is the same as the supplied password, if it does require a username:graeme

Olivier Buisard Staff

Hi Graeme,

it looks like information is missing in your PayFast payment configuration.

The field 'Pass Phrase (MD5 secret)' is empty.It should be set to make signatures more secure.

To set up the secret word please log in to your Payfast account and click the EDIT button under Settings → Salt Pass Phrase.

I am not sure it is linked to the issue...

Olivier.

graeme colston

Just checking in to see where we are with this issue, unable to use bank transfer as alternative. Possible if we can just that working in the meantime. Payfast can be on the back burner.m

graeme colston

Hi Guys, I was hoping for a solution today, to at least get EFT payment option working, after clicking PLACE ORDER the page freezes on PROCESSING PAYMENT, please see attchment.

My client is starting to get cranky.

Attachments

Screenshot 2026-01-26 at 11.16.59.png
Olivier Buisard Staff

Graeme,

I noticed several issues on the site.

For starters, the F0F libraries have not been 'cleaned' from the site. You should only have one version available and you got 4.

When I try and enter a new address for billing then the system 'hangs' with an error. And I believe it comes from the fact that when getting into the shipping address, the billing address cannot be saved. So I wonder if the J2Store addresses table is correctly structured.

Is it possible to have the structure of 

_j2store_addresses

Thank you!

Most likely you have issues with payments if there are javascript fails in the browser console. But I could not get that far because of the previous issue.

Olivier.

Olivier Buisard Staff

Thanks Graeme,

as I thought, there is a column that should not be there, probably added by a custom field that has been removed or an extension no longer in use.

The column 

vm_userinfo_id
 
is not part of the core extension.
 
Either you need to remove that column or if it's populated with data you want to keep, modify the structure so that it has a default of 0 (like the user_id in the table).

Olivier.

Olivier Buisard Staff

Graeme,

great!

This was not going to be the fix for the payments, it was meant for new users to enter addresses.

I needed that fixed before I could get to the payment part on your site.

Now I can get to it. Looking into why the payments do not go through.

Olivier.

Olivier Buisard Staff

All right, we have gotten a little bit further...

For better efficiency in the future, we have created a tool that is able to check what is 'incorrect' in the database and we were able to see that 2 more tables have incorrect structure.

The tables:

_j2store_orderitems (remove the vm_orderitem_id column)

_j2store_orders (remove the order_vm_id column)

That will, thankfully, resolve the payment going through issue.

Olivier.

graeme colston

Thank olivier, however, I still have the payment issue on both EFT and Payfast.

Olivier Buisard Staff

Hmmm... did you remove the columns? You did not mention it.

Olivier.

graeme colston

Hi Olivier

My bad, though you had removed them, the problem has been resolved now, THANK YOU!

Olivier Buisard Staff

Wonderful! That's great Graeme.

 

Olivier.