I'm just starting out with Paypal, so this is a newbie question.
I've been going through the instructions for setting up Paypal subscription service, but I think I'm looking at the wrong thing.
What I want to acheive is to get back some kind of response from Paypal so that I can update the database on my web site to mark a registered user as having paid. Basically I have a flag in the database that says if the user is subscribed or not. I want to ensure that the user is marked as paid so long as their Paypal subscription is maintained.
While the instructions linked above do say how to set up a button to receive a payment, there's nothing there about getting any data back from Paypal.
I know there are terms like IPN and sandbox that are related to what I'm trying to do, but I can't find clear instructions for how to get started on this process. I'm just circling around and not getting anywhere.
Where do I start on setting this up? Where is there a clear beginner's tutorial?
Also, I'm using PHP/Javascript/MySQL on my website.
PayPal's IPN service is what you want to use. I've used it myself to do just what you're looking to do.
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is PayPal's message service that
sends a notification when a transaction is affected. Once IPN is
integrated, sellers can automate their back office so they don’t have
to wait for payments to come in to trigger order fulfillment. IPN can
send notifications for these transactions:
Instant payments, including Express Checkout and direct credit card payments
eCheck payments and pending, completed, or denied status payments
Pending payments
Recurring payments and subscriptions
Authorizations
Disputes, chargebacks, reversals, and refunds
You can also view notifications on PayPal’s IPN History page and
resend them if you need to. As PayPal’s interface for handling
purchase confirmation and server-to-server communications, IPN can
also be used to manage and customize a variety of APIs and
communications, including:
Customize your website's response to customer purchases in seconds
Track customers via IPN "pass-through" variables
Notify sellers who deal mostly in software downloads and other digital, online goods
Track affiliate sales and commissions
Store transaction information in your own database
For more about IPN:
Technical Overview (link to new html version of docs on developer central)
Instant Payment Notification Guide (PDF)
Code Samples
I'm not sure if its the same thing, but I just setup my friends website with Express Checkout, and I wanted to add all paid orders to an orders table in my database.
After I call SetExpressCheckout, and the user is returned to my site after going through the purchase flow on Paypal's side,
I used the information from GetExpressCheckoutDetails.
Then, if DoExpressCheckoutPayment
is successful (also called from the "callback" page) I then do the appropriate work in my database as far as logging the order details. For you in this case, it could be updating a record for the user in the database.
Hope that helps a little.
Related
I'm trying to setup recurring payments in Paypal for my website using REST API, and I have 2 questions/problems:
Can't see transaction details in the paypal checkout page:
For one time payment, I know how to display transaction details by providing values for item_list (as in https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/).
However I don't know what values we should provide so that recurring payment profile will be shown on checkout page as well.
In the below picture(left side) you can see that no information is presented to the client regarding the payment amount and setup fees.
If I switch to production environment when the user tries to make a recurring payment, the user is redirected to the paypal website and he sees this error:
Sorry, we weren’t able to set up preapproved payments at this time.
Please return to the merchant and choose another way to pay.
So what's the issue with the recurring payment:
Why the user does not see any information regarding the payment amount in checkout paypal checkout page.
Why in production env the user gets that error message?
I'm using this documentation:
http://paypal.github.io/PayPal-PHP-SDK/sample/doc/billing/CreatePlan.html
http://paypal.github.io/PayPal-PHP-SDK/sample/doc/billing/CreateBillingAgreementWithPayPal.html
http://paypal.github.io/PayPal-PHP-SDK/sample/doc/billing/ExecuteAgreement.html
How will I be notified when a paypal client cancel the recurring payment?
It is important for my web application to know when somebody cancel the recurring payment.
I read something about webhooks, is this the way?
Can you give me some documentation?
My location is Romania, if this matters.
Thanks,
Catalin
I am having a very hard time figuring out whether it is even possible, but here is the task I want to do. Whenever an invoice that is created by my merchant account, I want PayPal to send a webhook to my webserver notifying that the invoice has been paid for. I can find full documentation on how to do that for simple payments, but there is literally nothing documented on how to do that with an invoice.
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) can be used for this.
When a PayPal invoice is paid the PayPal server will POST transaction data including the PayPal invoice ID and any custom invoice ID you supply with the original invoice. That way you can automate procedures based on the transaction data.
IPN works with all payments, refunds, disputes, etc. on your account. It's a very useful tool.
This question asked before but didn't got any answer.Maybe things have been changed.
When you click the Express Checkout PayPal button on any webshop, it redirects you to a specific paypal login link, for paying the order.
I have been searching high and low for 3 weeks for a simple paypal php curl script that logs you in from this step, and confirms the payment, but have not been able to find anything.
I found out it is not possible to use the API for this, so its gotta be done by CURL.
I'm asking for this because I run a dropshipping website, and would like to automate certain steps, like placing and paying orders. A working code for this would help not just me, but all looking to automate buying in some form.
Thank's!
You can't log the buyer into PayPal when you redirect them to the site. The buyer has to enter their own account credentials themselves.
If you wanted to bill a buyer without requiring they log into PayPal each time you would need to use billing agreements (reference transactions) through Express Checkout. If you set up a billing agreement with a buyer you can charge a previously successful sale to bill them again for a different amount.
You cannot do what you want with Express Checkout, especially since nobody will ever enter the paypal details on your website (that is the entire point of paypal).
You can use either preapproved payments (buyers preappove payments being taken out of their account up to a certain ceiling), or reference transactions (you reference a new transaction to an older transaction. PayPal will then use the billing details of this earlier transaction to bill the user).
Preapproved payments is part of Adaptive Payments. Documentation is at https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/adaptive-payments/integration-guide/APIntro/
You can find more details about Reference Transactions at https://cms.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_ECReferenceTxns
Note: Reference Transactions needs to be enabled on your account. This API call is not open to everyone due to the potential for abuse, so you may want to look into whether you're eligible for it before you start working on a full integation with it.
You can find more info here :https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Merchant-services-Archive/Does-Paypal-have-a-quot-Token-Payments-quot-concept/td-p/325794
Also google "token payments" as that is what you need and most payment gateways usually support them.
I am going to set up a website that will use paypals reoccuring billing. The question I have is if I have over 3000 customers, for example, how do I make it more simple for me to print out their addresses where to ship the product instead of doing it one by one?
I am not going to use Paypal api for this but instead direct link to paypal as such described in this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHC9BoRDEOY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
If I was to set something up like this, I would uses PayPal's IPN feature to record all of the transactions, transaction details and profile details for these recurring profiles in my database. Then I would create my own system for running reports or a query against my Database, and then display the information in what ever format I would want.
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is a message service that notifies you of events related to PayPal transactions. You can use it to automate back-office and administrative functions, such as fulfilling orders, tracking customers, and providing status and other information related to a transaction.
There is more on IPN here.
I'm doing a project involving Paypal, more specifically with the NVP API in PHP. But I just can't seem to figure what to use the IPN feature for.
I mean, when the user has been redirected to Paypal to confirm the purchase, he is redirected back to my website's "Paypal-succes-page", when the transaction is complete. And just to be sure that he actually payed i could use the "PaymentDetails" operation.
Now where does IPN fit in this process? and what is the benefit of it?
Thanks
The integrate with PayPal's services you will notice there are three main channels (and IMO it's important to know this so you can decide the benefits for your application):
IPN: Instant Payment Notification
PDT: Payment Data Transfer
PayPal's API
To use PayPal's IPN you need to add a 'listener' script (example) and add the address to your PayPal account. Whenever an event occurs PayPal will send a message directly to your server via your listener and you then update your accounts appropriately. This is especially useful for running subscription services as events will occur in the background without user intervention and you can capture successful/failed recurring payments etc.
PayPal's PDT is a system for accepting data when a user is redirected back to your site from PayPal. For example, a user clicks 'Buy', they are directed to PayPal, enter information etc. Then, once the payment has been taken, they are redirected back to your site. PayPal can pass details about the transaction including whether it was successful or not so you can display the appropriate success/failed page from your site.
PayPal's API allows you to integrate more deeply with PayPal's services, and you would use this if you were managing payments directly from your site.
These services aren't mutually exclusive, so you can use any combination with your application.
I hope this helps
The IPN feature is a very useful feature which you should use to update your database in my opinion. Sure the user is redirected to your success-page after the purchase where you can validate the payment details.
But what if he closes (by accident or not) the browser before reaching your success page? You will never know the result of the transaction and you will never update your database or process his order accordingly.
When using the IPN you can be sure that the transaction result will always reach you because PayPal will keep on making an offline request to your IPN page until it has reached your servers.
Instant Payment Notification
The typical usage of the IPN is to validate the purchase and to let your script or management system know that the transaction is complete so your system can update any records you may have for your service.
But the most important part is that the transaction is validated.
IPN send all data about transaction to your server - price, items, contacts ... so you can check, if someone don't pay you only 1$ instead of 100$ and confirm your order. It prevets thiefs, cheaters, ... USE IT! ;)