I am currently using the PayPal NVP API, using the DoDirectPayment method, to accept credit card payments. Is there a way to do something similar with ACH payments?
ACH can be used as a funding source by buyers paying via PayPal. I.e. they can have the bank added inside their PayPal account.
But if you want to more directly process ACH payments through your site and be responsible for waiting to see whether the payments go through or not (since ACH takes time), you will need something like the Payflow gateway and a relationship with an ACH processor such as NORWEST. That's just one common option I've heard of, there surely must be others. This is more a question for some Google research than Stack Overflow.
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I used the Paypal NVP API (Express checkout) for a long time and it worked fine. I'm now developing a new project and wanted to use the 'new' Rest API that Paypal recommends for new projects. I, however, find the documentation rather imprecise at some points and often contradictory.
I'm using their sandbox to test the payments and I noticed that the payments work fine, except that once I log in to the Paypal Buyer account, I can only select the PayPal balance to pay.
Is this a limitation of the Rest API? I want to clarify that I am based outside the US and I do not want to accept credit card payments on my own website (well, if there is no other solution, I would accept it). I'd rather have the user get redirected to the PayPal page and provide his credit card information over there. I do, however, want to give the option to the user to at least select from PayPal balance or credit card. (As I'm used to from the NVP API)
UPDATE
In the meantime, I've done a lot of additional research. On the PHP SDK page, they've added the following notice:
Important: The PayPal REST API no longer supports new direct credit card integrations. Please instead consider Braintree Direct; which is, PayPal's preferred integration solution for accepting direct credit card payments in your mobile app or website. Braintree, a PayPal service, is the easiest way to accept credit cards, PayPal, and many other payment methods.
How should I understand the direct credit card integration? Is that the credit card payment on the PayPal website after being redirected onto that page or do they mean credit card payments where the card number is provided on ones own website?
I've got the impression, PayPal is entirely shifting to Braintree Payments. Even on the official PayPal Developer website, they propose Express Checkout for quick (client side only) integrations and Braintree Direct for other payments.
This is what I need:
PHP integration of the API calls
Payment methods: PayPal balance, Different Credit Cards
eventually recurring payments
I do not need:
Third party invoicing
client management
shipping address management
So my concrete questions would be:
What's the difference between Braintree and PayPal payment methods (since they belong to the same organisation)?
Should I use PayPal Rest API or Braintree solutions in my case?
What are those PayPal limitations that they list on their website?
Has nobody got any experience in this domain? Even partial answers are welcome!
I have partial answer, as I am also in the process of choosing between BrainTree, PayPal Rest API, and Express checkout.
I'm here to answer "How should I understand the direct credit card integration?"
I'm no expert on the subject, but during my recent work at the area of integration with checkout systems, I've learned this:
One of the types of credit-cards is called "direct credit card". It means that it is directly connected with a bank account - when it is billed, the money is instantly transfered from the connected bank-account to the merchant. This is different than how most credit-cards work - most will only charge the bank-acoount at the beginninng of the next month.
I've come accross situations where direct cards behave differently than regular credit-cards.
For instance - the checkout-system I integrate with doesn't allow to monthly-bill a direct card. direct card on a monthly payment plan have to be billed manually.
So for me, the PayPal announcement you qouted means a lot - I need to support direct credit cards, hence I'm choosing BrainTree. Thanks!
Note to moderators:
I originally wanted to post this as a comment to the question, becuase I thought it would help the OP. I don't have enough reputation to comment, so I posted an Answer.
I am creating a booking site, where the public can make bookings and then pay using their card. I want to take the card details and send them to PayPal via their REST api, and then send the amount to a merchant who will be one of our customer's selling the booked product.
Is this possible to do? PayPal documentation is confusing at best. I currently have the card payments being taken successfully and paid into our own 'developer' account, but what I can't seem to find is how to credit the money to a PayPal account that isn't our own instead.
I have looked into the PayPal Permissions API but again the documentation is unclear, and I don't see where I specify the merchants id or email address when calling RequestPermissions.
What you're looking to do can be accomplished by using PayPal's Adaptive Payments product (https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/products/adaptive-payments/). Unfortunately, Adaptive Payments are not currently available with REST APIs. So if you have the option of going with classic APIs, this is currently available to you.
I have an educational website that uses 'Stripe Connect' to accept payments from students, and split the payments between myself (the platform provider) and the teachers (content-creators).
Payments to teachers are currently handled through Stripe. Whenever a student purchases content, the teacher automatically receives the payment directly into their Stripe account. I retain a portion of the transaction directly into my Stripe account. It's an easy system and works nicely.
The problem is that students want to pay with PayPal.
So, I would like to add PayPal as a payment option for students, without forcing content-creators to connect two separate accounts--one for when viewers pay with PayPal, and another for when viewers pay with Stripe. The only idea I have so far, is to deposit all PayPal payments to one PayPal account, then manually "payout" teachers into their Stripe accounts every week.
But is there an automated way to do this? Stripe says they don't accept payments from PayPal.
Any ideas/help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Adaptive payments does support chained payments, as Andrew says in his answer; it would work very much like what you describe having set up with Stripe.
However, this will not meet your requirements of having both PayPal and Stripe payments arrive in a single teacher account. Unfortunately, Stripe & PayPal see each other as competitors and to my knowledge neither one has built a tidy product to consolidate "their" payments into the other company's account.
If you are willing to move away from Stripe, PayPal does provide many solutions that consolidate "raw" credit card payments and PayPal account payments into a single receiver account, including through Adaptive Payments as cited by Andrew.
I would add that Braintree, having been purchased by PayPal, provides perhaps the most Stripe-like integration for a product that would accomplish this goal. However, I do not believe that the Braintree SDK will do the chained payments for you; you might have to do some work to make that happen on your end (take the first payment, then calculate and make payouts either weekly as you mentioned or per-incoming-transaction).
A couple other things to think about: if you split some payments into delayed fulfillment but others are chained inside one payments provider you will need to support two very different flows; you may find it easier (for both you and your content providers) to select one model and run everything through that model.
Also, instead of payments going to you & then chained to the content providers you could have payments to go directly to the content providers and then trigger billing (either invoicing or automatically collected via recurring payments) from the content providers to you for your cut.
The best pattern depends largely upon how you want the legal & financial responsibilities to lie: are you providing the good or service and people are paying you for it, making you like a retail store or distributor for producers? Or are content providers providing the good or service being paid for to the students, and you are like a marketplace/facilitator/advertising venue? This question becomes significant as soon as someone is unsatisfied with something they have bought :).
You can use the Adaptive Payments platform with PayPal to split payments just like you're doing with Stripe. Specifically, you'd use the Pay API setup as a chained payment with a secondary receiver.
If you happen to be working with PHP my class library for PayPal will make all of the API calls very simple for you.
A proposed scenario is, assume the shopping cart site, where buyer has to pay for a product. The sold product costs will be transferred to the respective merchant. Here, the website owner has to be paid(commission) for the purchased product.
Is it possible in Paypal? Right now, I am using Paypal checkout. Your ideas/suggestions would be helpful. Please do it.
There are a number of ways you could set this up.
You could use the Adaptive Payments platform, specifically the Pay API, to create parallel or chained payments so that multiple receivers can receive money within the same transaction.
You can also do a parallel payment with Express Checkout, but you can't do a chained payment.
The main difference is that with parallel payments the buyer will see the split during checkout. With a chained payment you can hide that so they only see the primary receiver. Also, chained payments can be delayed so you can trigger the commission to be paid at a later time if necessary (for example, waiting for services to be completed.)
Another way you could do this is to use Payments Standard, Express Checkout, or Payments Pro, and let the payment go entirely to a single account. Then setup a Pay API request to submit payment to the secondary receiver, or use the MassPay API. This could be setup within an IPN solution so the entire thing is automated. In this case you'd basically be building what the adaptive payments platform does for you, but it would give you a little bit more freedom over everything in the application.
I working on an e-commerce site where I need to do something like this.
When the users is on payment page, he should be doing the following things:
- pays a fee
- authorize the payment of an amount (which could vary, but not with a big amount...)
Up to here, everything goes find with PayPal Direct payment system.
But I need more. I need that the authorized amount at some point to be directly charged by another seller (or transferred)
Any chance I can do this with PayPal Direct (such the the payment would still be made in site)? Or is there any other method?
If you're receiving the money via DoDirectPayment you could use MassPay or Pay to send funds to a 3rd party. If you want the split to happen within the original payment you can use Pay by itself and set it up as a parallel or chained payment. See the Adaptive Payments documentation for more details on that.
(Disclaimer: I am employee) Balanced will work for your use case
capturing cards directly without sending user to a third party site
paying out to a merchant of your choice via ACH payout at a later point in time.
The caveat is it's US only so if your outside the US let me know and I'll see if I can find any other options for you.