Accept payments with your own Paystack & PayPal

Vilo lets you accept card payments through your own Paystack and PayPal accounts. Money settles directly to you and Vilo takes 0% — we only charge a subscription for the platform. You set this up under Settings → Banking & business → Payment gateways.

One set of gateways per business

If you run more than one business on Vilo, each business has its own Paystack and PayPal connection — exactly like its bank account. A booking always charges the gateway of the business that owns the listing, so money lands in the right account automatically.

• Use the Business selector at the top of the Payment gateways card to choose which business you’re connecting.
• Connect, test, disable and remove gateways independently for each business.
• With a single business there’s nothing extra to do — the selector is hidden and everything works as before.

Which gateway for which currency

• Paystack — cards & instant EFT in ZAR. The default for South African guests.
• PayPal — international cards in USD. Your ZAR prices are converted automatically at the daily exchange rate.
• EFT — manual bank transfer, also set per business under Bank accounts.

Your default currency (ZAR or USD) decides which gateway a guest sees first; they can switch between the gateways you’ve enabled.

Connecting Paystack

1. Pick the business at the top of the card.
2. In your Paystack dashboard, open Settings → API Keys & Webhooks.
3. Copy your public key (pk_live_…) and secret key (sk_live_…).
4. Paste both into Vilo and click Connect & validate. We check the keys with Paystack before saving — invalid keys are rejected.

Connecting PayPal

1. Pick the business, then at developer.paypal.com create (or open) a REST API app.
2. Copy the Client ID and Secret, pick Live or Sandbox, and paste them into Vilo.

Statement descriptor

On Paystack you can set a short statement descriptor — the word that appears on the guest’s bank statement for a payment to you (e.g. SEASIDE VILLA). Keep it under 22 characters; banks truncate longer text. Final display depends on the guest’s bank, but Vilo always sends it through.

Your keys are safe

• Secrets are encrypted at rest and never shown again — you’ll only ever see the last 4 characters.
• Leave the secret field blank when editing to keep the stored key.
• Disable a gateway to hide it at checkout without deleting your keys.

Take a payment right now

Once Paystack is connected, use Request payment to generate a shareable Paystack link for any amount. The link uses the selected business’s Paystack, so the funds land in that business’s account — handy for deposits before the full guest checkout is live.