Sofort effective November 1st, 2023 is deprecated. Existing businesses already using Sofort will be able to continue accepting Sofort payments until mid/late 2024.A popular payment method in Europe
Stripe users in Europe and the United States can accept SOFORT payments from customers in the following countries:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Germany
- Italy
- Netherlands
- Spain
During the payment process, your customer is redirected to their bank’s website or mobile application to authorize the payment.
SOFORT is an asynchronous method of payment. This means your customer takes action to send the amount to you through a redirect and it typically takes 2 business days but can take up to 14 days to confirm the success or failure of a payment. The risk of fraud or unrecognized payments is extremely low with SOFORT as the customer must authenticate the payment with their bank. As such, there is no dispute process that can result in a chargeback and funds withdrawn from your Stripe account. Should a customer dispute a payment to their bank, it is handled internally — no dispute information is presented in the Dashboard.
Since the payment is asynchronous it is possible to fail. If a charge has not been confirmed within the cut-off time, the charge’s status is automatically transitioned from pending to failed. Additionally, if the funds are received after the cut-off date, the customer is automatically refunded.
Finally, SOFORT payments can be refunded up to 180 days after the original payment.
SOFORT only works with Euro Currency and for customers from the above-mentioned countries. Also, it only provides one-off payments, therefore can not be used for Payment Plans (installments) and/or Subscriptions. Set up your system to accept SOFORT payments through Stripe
1. Enable SOFORT as a payment method in your Stripe account. Navigate from your Dashboard to Settings → Payment methods and enable SOFORT.
Make sure to read the Terms of Use and the SOFORT ct Addendum and then click on Turn on on the modal.
2. Make sure that your school’s currency is set to Euro. You can change that by going to Settings → Financial → Currency.
3. Click on Settings → Financial → Payment Gateway and enable SOFORT.
Your Payment pages will include SOFORT as a payment method.
For more information on how to accept SOFORT payment through Stripe, you may visit https://stripe.com/docs/sources/sofort