I am developing a website in PHP that accepts PayPal payments. It uses the IPN from PayPal and has a custom payment template etc etc. It all works great through the Sandbox server but when it comes to showing my client, I don't want to have to tell them to login to/create a Sandbox account, create a buyer account and make a payment - he hasn't got time for that and probably won't be able to do it.
Therefore, my question is - is there any simple way that I can show my client the PayPal integration in "test mode" without him using the sandbox? I realise that I can set the transaction value to 0.01 and just test on the live PayPal server but that isn't an ideal solution.
Cheers!
Edit: Just to better explain what I mean, this is what my client sees when he first goes to checkout;
alt text http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/2545/67913734.png
As you can see, he has to login to his Sandbox account before then purchasing the item using the buyer email that he sets up. It's just confusing and totally non user-friendly.
Unfortunately there isn't a way around this problem via paypal. Their sandbox will always require you to be logged in to actually demo.
Here are the solutions I have taken especially with remote clients.
Use Skype or similar service so I can share my screen as I demo how it works. This solution seems to work fairly well, and eliminates the need for them to take the extra steps required.
When working on something I want to quick demo for a client and get their take, I have started using http://www.jingproject.com/ It allows me to make a quick video of the process. It uploads it to their server and provides a url I can send the client to watch what I did.
Wish I could provide a more elegant solution.
What I'd do is integrate with the actual PayPal live site and use real money. The great thing is you can refund the transaction (including the fees) so nobody pays anything. I believe the refund timeframe is 30 days, but there's no reason to wait too long and risk it. The added advantage is that you get to prove to your client that the PayPal integration really works.
If there's a concern with littering the seller account with test transactions and refunds then go ahead and set up a separate seller account. It's quick to set up as long as you don't expect your test account to be receiving thousands of dollars.
Related
We have used DoDirectMethod to credit card payment and recurring payment with CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile Method. But Some how i can not get error "This transaction cannot be processed due to an invalid merchant configuration.".
I found some solution for this :
1)I have problem like : Features that are not enabled for live transactions
2) If for use of REST API ,
I need to change my country then how can i change country or currency.
3) In paypal errorcode i found : Occurs when you have not agreed to the billing agreement.
- Then how can i agreed billing agrrement- need steps for it.
Please help me by providing steps of configuration or any other solution.
PayPal is confusing peoples/developers completely, i am also getting the same issue from one month on one of our client's website, i was used DoDirectPayment, and it works like a charm for test transactions, but as i make it LIVE it is was showing the same issue, i found that too, to performing transactions in LIVE mode we need to 'Enable' this feature for Direct Credit Cards, but many times i requested them (PayPal) to enable that feature, but all time they just received my Application Online and reponsed that it will take about 24 hours. I have also added extra information like SSN, EIN all that but they are so lazy or not active to do that.
At one point they are saying we need Website Payments Pro but i have not found a single link to register that, I found PayPal Payments Pro link at many sites and even in their site, these guys have a huge documentation on that website payments pro and dodirect method but not a single link how to register for that service or how they enable that feature for 'Live' mode.
And today i found they updated their developers site and make things a little different, also provided an extra method "braintreegateway" in order to process, and i tried that too using their sandbox account, its working with only PHP 5.4 and above, so old PHP version servers are unable to get that. And they also need to register your details at their end.
If i have already a PayPal Business account why do i need to register at every single method.
Sucked
When testing some donations on my local machine, I set various key=value pairs to do various things (return to specific thank you page, get POST data from PayPal and not GET data and others) I also built my code around the response from the PayPal sandbox.
BUT, when my code goes to the production server and we switch on live payments and test with real accounts and money, a few strange things happen;
We get a GET response from PayPal - the URL is filled with crap.
We get no transaction details. This is the biggie, no name, no txn_id, no dates, nothing. We get a handful of keys etc, its not totally empty and the payment has gone through, but nowhere near the verbosity of the sandbox.
Curious about why this might be? It doesn't really make sense to have a sandbox (or dev environment) that is substantially different from the production environment. Or, am I missing something?
EDIT: Still no response to my question in the PayPal Developer Forums. I don't even get a donation amount back from PayPal. Is this a setting maybe?
EDIT #2: Two of you have suggested to check PDT and Auto-Return. The data analytics guy for the project only 2 hrs ago suggested the same. I have asked the client to confirm this. I can't see a setting for it in the Sandbox so can assume that it is enabled by default?
Are you sure you have all of the PDT and Auto-Return stuff configured the same on your live account as you do on the Sandbox account? There hasn't been much help from PayPal in the x.com forums. I'd recommend posting a ticket to www.paypal.com/mts, although, they've been a little bit slow there, too. If you login to your account, though, and go into the Contact by Phone section, you'll see a direct phone number for tech support. This is probably your best bet.
I'm putting sagepay into a PHP powered site.
So far I've had no trouble integrating the Form into the site, their docs are great compared to paypal (mutter mutter)
However I noticed in the dev guide for form integration, they say you can't rely on sagepay sending the customer back every time as they could close the browser, or navigate somewhere else etc.
At the same time, I don't want to move everything out of the user's cart and into an order before I know it's been confirmed / payed for - otherwise if they cancel or the transaction fails somehow on sagepay's end, their cart will be wiped out when they come back, making retrying the transaction a pain for the user, and I will have a duff order polluting my database.
So what I want to know is if there is a way to get sagepay to send a request to the site when something happens with a payment, similar to paypal's Instant Payment Notifications?
EDIT:
Or are they only saying it's patchy because they can't garuantee it, but it works enough of the time to practically rely on it?
Sagepay (AKA Protx) form integration redirects the user automatically once the transaction has completed.
For small sites, i advise my clients to always check the sagepay transaction logs (on the sagepay site) before sending out any goods.
You should be logging the order before they go to Sagepay. Then changing it's "status" to paid when they get redirected back to your site. This gives you a bit more of a paper trail to pick up any possible issues.
If you want a more robust solution. Try Sagepay direct integration. It has more requirements and is harder to integrate but on bigger projects (where you can't manually check orders) it's usually required. Mainly because users can stay on-site without having to go off to Sagepay to make payments.
I'm a bit of a newb and have never integrated paypal into a website before so I apologise for my lack of knowledge.
I'm trying to build a website which allows users to sign up and, assuming they get themselves paypal premier accounts (so they can receive payments by credit card) they will be able to receive payments from other users of my site.
So someone will sign up using their Paypal email address, and other users will then be able to send them money through my site. If they use one of my special services then I also want to be able to take a 1% fee of the money sent.
I'm using cakephp and I've searched and found a few cakephp related paypal components but to me it seems that these are aimed at people who want to just use their own paypal account to receive money. Like having a paypal checkout button. Whereas I want to be able to direct money into many different paypal accounts. Is this possible? And if so can any kind soul direct me to where I should be reading (pref something not too difficult - I'm a learner!).
Also as a side note, are there any special security issues I need to take care of when dealing with paypal, especially considering the particular nature of what I want to achieve? How easy would it be for a bad person to alter someones paypal email to direct funds to themselves?
many thanks in advance
Dave
A few years ago I did a similar thing, although the specific code is languishing on an old computer somewhere... Anyway, the way I did it was to use a combination of IPN and Paypal Mass Payments. Any payments have to run through your own PP account first and foremost, at which point on a successful payment IPN calls a script to run Mass Payments and send the money to the intended target(s).
It's a bit fiddly, and I seem to remember (at least when I did it) there were some odd bugs in IPN, but this should do it for you.
HOpe this helps a bit!
I need to build web application where users can sell goods.
Each user should be able to get money directly on his PayPal account.
Can you suggest which PayPal service/payment method (or other payment system) it is better/safely to use in this case?
Thanks in advance
This is easily set up (if I read your requirements correctly). You would have to create your part of the system, but that's obvious.
The rest, specifically vendor payments, could be handled all by PayPal.
PayPal could process the orders into individual accounts. You would simply have to use the same IPN notification file for each Buy Link. This IPN notification file is what PayPal uses to notify an order has come. It does not matter that it may have come TO Suzie's or TO Bob's account.
So, your notification script gets the order -- Then, your internal system differentiates the vendor and ... that's it ;).
IPN is very simple too, and they've got nice templates in various languages to get you started.
I'm sure there are alternate ways to do it, but IPN is what I personally use, combined with a back-end system. I even have another vendor whose plug-in for my product I sell. Money goes directly into his PayPal account by simply changing the recipient email in the Buy URL (or form).
Any competent programmer should be able to handle this with ease. The proficiencies would be SQL/database experience and web coding (any language). That's about it. A non-programmer could probably even learn, though needs to be careful to sanitize the input to protect against SQL injection attacks.
You can use ExpressCheckout, this means that your sellers do not need tho have Pro accounts, but login and payment will occur in paypal's popup window. You can also use more advanced integration, but this might require the merchants to upgrade their account, and this might cost them money in every month.
You also need to collect API keys from merchants and store them in a very safe location, or collect the money yourself, and pay for the merchants using paypal's API code, but this will introduce additional (transfer) costs.
You will most likely have to write it from scratch. I mean, from some bare framework.