Questions and answers about Checkout Flex and Checkout All‑in‑one

Here you will find answers to questions about upgrades, transactions, plug-ins and more.

Overview

  • PostFinance Checkout offers several payment services. At its heart is the PostFinance Checkout back office tool, which enables payments via our PAX card terminals or e-commerce shop plug-ins.

    You can register free of charge at any time and test our solution in simulation mode. Register at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.

    If you are interested in our physical PAX card terminals, you are welcome to visit our Terminal Shop at The link will open in a new window terminal-shop.postfinance.ch.

    If you are looking for a suitable payment plug-in for your e-commerce shop, please visit our GitHub page The link will open in a new window github.com/pfpayments.

    We support established shop systems such as WooCommerce, Shopify (direct integration into the shop), Magento 2, Shopware, Prestashop, OXID, Gambio, OpenCart and many more. With our PostFinance Subscription plug-in for WooCommerce, you can also offer subscription products (recurring payments) in your shop. You can download plug-ins directly and install them in your shop. You can then test our checkout free of charge.

    For integrations for in-house developments, we offer the PostFinance Checkout API and various SDKs in various programming languages (PHP, Java, C#, Python, TypeScript, etc.). To find out, take a look at our API documentation at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.

    You can find all documentation links on the plug-ins and instructions for the PAX card terminals at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch/doc.

Top 5 questions and answers

  • PostFinance (PostFinance Pay, PostFinance e-finance)
    E-mail: checkout@postfinance.ch, Tel.: 0848 382 423 (in Switzerland max. CHF 0.08/min.)

    Wallee/Snapswap (Visa, Mastercard, TWINT, PostFinance Pay)
    E-Mail: info@wallee.com, Tel: 044 505 13 60

    Worldline SIX (Visa, Mastercard, TWINT, China Union Pay, Diners)
    E-Commerce
    E-Mail: cs.ecom@worldline.com, Tel.: 0848 83 20 00
    Point of sale (POS)
    E-Mail: customerservice@worldline.com, Tel.: 0848 83 20 00

    Concardis (Visa, Mastercard, Diners)
    E-mail: servicech@nets.eu, Tel.: 058 220 58 58

    FirstData (Visa, Mastercard, Diners, JCB, China Union Pay)
    E-Mail: fde-service@fiserv.com, Tel: 0800 550 014

    Swisscard (American Express)
    E-mail: partner.service@swisscard.ch, Tel.: 044 659 64 44

    PowerPay (MF Group, payments on account)
    E-mail: partner@mfgroup.ch, Tel.: 058 806 06 31

    Boncard (WIR, Boncard, Swiss Pay, Gift Card, Lunch-Check, EKZ card)
    E-Mail: pool@boncard.ch, Tel: 0848 080 408

    TWINT Ltd (TWINT)
    E-mail: support@twint.ch, Tel.: 058 667 98 44

    PayPal
    Contact details at The link will open in a new window paypal.com

  • You can find a current overview and documentation at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.
  • The Checkout All-in-One product is based on a collecting service. This means that all payment methods (PostFinance Pay, Visa, Mastercard and TWINT) are processed via one contract. Additional payment methods cannot be added.

    In addition to the collecting service, other payment methods (e.g. American Express or cryptocurrencies) and acceptance partners are also available for the Checkout Flex product. A separate contract must be concluded with each acceptance partner for this purpose. With Checkout Flex, you can also carry out recurring transactions (e.g. subscriptions).

    You can register free of charge at any time at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch. After creating the account, select the required product and start with the free simulation mode.

  • We already support Apple Pay. Please check with your payment service provider whether it supports the payment method during processing.

    We also support cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin Suisse), which are connected via the Worldline processor.

    Checkout Flex is constantly being developed and expanded. Newly available payment methods can be viewed at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch. Here you can also see which payment methods are supported by us and with which acceptance partners.

  • No. As an alternative to registering a PostFinance business account, you can also register a Swiss credit card for charging fees. Payment is made to the Swiss bank account of your choice.

General Questions

  • Error 403 refers to a user having insufficient authorizations. As an admin user, you can grant other employees access to your account by creating users and assigning them roles and authorizations.

    If you do not assign these users any roles or authorizations, you will not be able to access your account, and will instead see an error page “Access denied – Error code: 403”.

    Be sure to always assign the appropriate reading rights to accounts and spaces. In other words, users must have read-only rights at least to accounts and spaces.

    The link will open in a new window Documentation Permission concept at checkout.postfinance.ch

  • Check which payment method was used to pay for the order. Next, speak to the acceptance partner responsible (see question above “Which acceptance partners and payment methods are supported?”).
  • An account was automatically assigned to you when you registered. If you are in the overview of your account, you will see a number after the “#” symbol at the top left. This is your unique AccountID.

    Your account links all your spaces and your current Checkout subscription (Flex, All-In-One).

    Your spaces are the link to your payment plug-ins in your shops or your PAX card terminals. Here you can set up everything related to your day-to-day business and payments:

    • Setting up payment methods
    • Link to the payment plug-in in your e-commerce systems or to your in-house development which you have programmed with our REST API
    • Link to your PostFinance Checkout PAX card terminals
    • View payment transactions and their processing (booking, refunds, cancellations)
    • Other functions

    When you are in your space, you will also see the Space ID at the top left after the “#” symbol.

Subscription

  • Switching from All-in-One to Flex or vice versa can be ordered from checkout@postfinance.ch. To do so, enter your AccountID and send an e-mail from the e-mail address you registered at Checkout.

  • You can cancel your subscriptions at any time in the Checkout back office. When logged in, select “Account” > “Subscription” > “Cancel subscription”.

    The checkout contract will be cancelled on your next billing run (max. 30 days).

  • Checkout All-in-One: two spaces are included in the price. We recommend using one space for the productive environment and the second for your test environment. If you want to use two productive online shops, you must conclude an additional acceptance agreement in the Organization menu.

    Checkout Flex: two spaces/online shops are included in the monthly fees. You can open as many additional spaces/online shops as you like for a monthly fee.

    Please note that for each space, new acceptance agreements must be set up for the desired payment methods.

  • The PostFinance Checkout subscription takes 1–2 working days once you have signed the contract online. To do so, go to “Account” > “Plan” > “Activate paid subscription”.

    The period during which the various payment methods are activated depends on the respective acceptance partner (Worldline, PostFinance, Wallee/Snapswap, etc.).

  • The activation fees and the monthly fees are charged to the PostFinance business account or the credit card each time.

Plugins

  • PostFinance is always reviewing the current market situation, and continues to expand the number of plug-ins it provides.
  • Firstly, please get in touch with the supplier for your shop software. It may be the case that an API connection has already been set up.

    Alternatively, PostFinance Checkout can be integrated via REST API web services. You can find detailed information at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.

    For more helpful information and tips on the topic, please visit The link will open in a new window github.com/pfpayments.

  • You use the E-Payment Module for Checkout to accept card payments in your Shopify webshop.

    Your webshop is linked to the E-Payment Module for Checkout via an app. You will soon no longer be able to process payments via your existing app, because Shopify will no longer support the current interface. For this reason, you are required to switch to the new Shopify payment app by 31 May 2024. This app is now available in your Shopify back end.

    You can complete the migration in just a few minutes. To do so, simply follow the instructions:

    The link will open in a new window Instructions for switching to the new PostFinance Checkout App for Shopify (PDF)

    After the migration, you will be able to use our new payment method PostFinance Pay, which will replace our two previous payment methods, PostFinance Card and PostFinance E-Finance.

    Due to this necessary change, the new app will incur an additional fee of 0.3 percent on your sales, which will be charged via the payment method you have saved in PostFinance Checkout (PostFinance account or credit card). This fee is charged to us by Shopify, and we pass it on to our merchants.

    If you have already switched to the new Shopify payment app, you don’t need to do anything.

    For any questions, please contact our support (checkout@postfinance.ch or 0848 382 423).

In-house development via API/SDK

  • Success/Failed URLs

    The Success/Failed URLs are defined on the transaction before payment is made on the payment page or Lightbox/Iframe. Depending on successful or failed transactions, the customer is then redirected to the success/failure URL of their shop.

    You can also extract the transaction ID in the response using the “Transaction Create” API/SDK method (before forwarding for payment) and save it in your systems (or via session) so that it remains available on the success/failed page after the customer has paid. This can be useful, for example, if you want to list the transaction details for the purchaser on the success page using the “Transaction Read” API/SDK method.

    Webhooks

    Webhooks serve to forward status updates (e.g. of transactions) to their internal systems (e.g. their shop backend or ERP/CRM application).

    The webhook sent to your system interface includes the ID of the entity (e.g. the transaction) as well as the status (e.g. transaction status) in the webhook signature process.

    More information on webhooks can be found at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.

  • You can find detailed information at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.

  • Yes, under “Features”, you can activate the “Token” option.

    You can find more detailed information on implementation at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.

  • Lightbox

    The user enters the payment details in an overlay. The form appears as an overlay on the retailer’s website.

    The link will open in a new window Information on Lightbox at checkout.postfinance.ch

    iFrame

    The user enters the payment details in an iFrame hosted by us. The iFrame itself can be embedded in the retailer’s website.

    The link will open in a new window Information on iFrame at checkout.postfinance.ch

  • Yes, you can customize the payment screen, e-mail templates and invoice templates.

    For simple adjustments, go to your space under “Settings” > “Customization” > “Resource Settings”. You can make changes under the “Email”, “Web” (for payment screens) and “Document” (for invoice templates) tabs.

    For more complex adjustments, go to your space under “Settings” > “Customization” > “Resource Editor”. In the editor, you can also customize the payment screen (folder “web”), e-mail templates (folder “email”) and invoices (folder “document”) with a TWIG template. There you can also remove or individually add individual elements by changing the HTML & CSS (style) code. With a TWIG code, you can also add variables (e.g. transaction properties of a payment) to a template.

    See our TWIG documentation at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.

PAX card terminals

    1. Order terminal at The link will open in a new window terminal-shop.postfinance.ch
    2. Select product and activate a subscription
    3. Configure terminal in space on the dashboard, including selecting the preferred payment methods
    4. As soon as at least one acceptance partner has the status “active”, an activation code will be displayed in your Checkout account.
    5. Enter the activation code in your terminal
    6. Terminal is ready for use

    You can find more information on terminal configuration at The link will open in a new window checkout.postfinance.ch.

    • PostFinance (PostFinance Card)
    • Worldline (Mastercard, Visa, Maestro, Vpay, TWINT, China Union Pay)
    • Swisscard (American Express)
    • Concardis (Mastercard, Visa, Maestro, Vpay)
    • Wallee/Snapswap (Visa, Mastercard, PostFinance Card, TWINT)
  • Our payment method PostFinance Card is usually activated within 10 working days. The activation of the other payment methods depends on the respective acceptance partner.

  • To enable the terminals to be activated, an active subscription to PostFinance Checkout Flex or PostFinance POS Payment Flex is a prerequisite. In addition, a PostFinance business account or a credit card is required for the monthly subscription fees.

  • In your space, the terminals can be configured under “Configurations”. Various adjustments can be made in these settings, such as the transaction configurations, receipt printing, receipt header or tip.

Switch from PostFinance Card/PostFinance e-finance to PostFinance Pay for online shops

  • You can find a description of the process for activating PostFinance Pay in the corresponding task after logging in with your personal account under “Space” > “Manual Tasks”. Follow the instructions to complete the changeover in a few minutes.

    A detailed, step by step guide can be found here:

    The link will open in a new window Instructions for activating PostFinance Pay and deactivating the previous PostFinance payment methods (PDF)

    Important note: You will receive a letter informing you as soon as PostFinance Pay and the associated manual tasks are available in your back office (only for retailers with PSP Checkout). Merchants with a different PSP will receive the information for activating PostFinance Pay at a later date. Communication will take place according to the timeline of the relevant PSP.

  • You can find a description of the process for deactivating the previous PostFinance payment methods in the corresponding task after logging in with your personal account under “Space” > “Manual Tasks”. The manual task appears automatically when the activation of PostFinance Pay is complete.

    A detailed, step by step guide can be found here:

    The link will open in a new window Instructions for activating PostFinance Pay and deactivating the previous PostFinance payment methods (PDF)

    Important note: You will receive a letter informing you as soon as PostFinance Pay and the associated manual tasks are available in your back office (only for retailers with PSP Checkout). Merchants with a different PSP will receive the information for activating PostFinance Pay at a later date. Communication will take place according to the timeline of the relevant PSP.

  • As with the previous PostFinance payment methods, PostFinance Pay makes it possible to register the payment method in an online shop (PostFinance Pay token) for recurring payments and one-touch payments. If customers have already registered in your online shop with the PostFinance Card payment method, they will automatically be migrated to PostFinance Pay and do not need to register again, provided that the PostFinance Card saved with the alias is still valid and that the customer has e-finance.

    Technical procedure for token migration:

    1. Alias token migration starts automatically in the background when the new PostFinance Pay payment method is activated in your payment service provider’s back office (see “How can I activate PostFinance Pay?”).
    2. The alias migration takes 24 hours. It is important not to deactivate any existing payment methods during this time.

    Request PostFinance Pay token version from your payment service provider

    To ensure that your customers’ migrated PostFinance Pay tokens are correctly displayed in your online shop, you as a merchant must request the new version of the PostFinance Pay token from your payment service provider for all aliases (trigger request “Token Merchant Update”) and display it to the customers accordingly. In the case of an alias for the PostFinance Card, the token version appears as a masked card number with expiry date and an image URL for the PostFinance Card logo. In the case of a PostFinance Pay token, the token version is displayed as a masked IBAN and contains an image URL for the PostFinance Pay logo.