Does Paypal "Buy Now" button triggers webhooks?
What's the disadvantage of using the Buy Now button versus a fully integrated payment system in a website selling digital goods?
PayPal buttons trigger webhooks called IPN (instant payment notification). You can define a controller to handle this request and update your database.
The button you put on your web site can include custom fields that will be sent back by the IPN (along with all information sent by default, such a price, etc) , making it easier to identify the payment (such as the identifier of the customer in your application).
I can elaborate and add some code later. Unfortunately I’m on my cellphone right now.
I cannot compare to other methods, as I have only worked with PayPal buttons and IPN, but it’s quite easy to make it work.
https://developer.paypal.com/api/nvp-soap/ipn/IPNIntro/
Related
I have set up the option to pay payments from my site with the PayPal system API. Everything has been fine for several months.
In a conversation with PayPal customer service I was told that I am sending the payments in a state of payment (for the purchase of a product) and not a donation
And that makes for mistakes
The problem is that because these are non-profit organizations it should be defined as a donation and not a payment
In this guide I have not found how to set it up: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/checkout/integrate/
You are using a Checkout flow, probably with a Smart Button.
If you want to use the Donation flow instead, you can create a Donate button via https://www.paypal.com/buttons
If you want the button to be editable so as to change the email of the receiving 'business' account, in step 2 uncheck the option to save the button at PayPal, and when viewing the code click the option above to remove code protection.
I new to paypal integration in asp.net . I found very difficult to understand the paypal api .
I under stood two types -
inline html form ( i.e is also called buy button )
payflow api
my questions are :
which one must be used for recurring payment ( subcription packages for end user)?
in first type , few sites suggested to use IPN for confirmation of payment. I want to know is it neccessary since without using IPN, also using notify_url we can confirm the payment success (as per my knowledge notify_url returns to your site when payment is completed at paypal site)?
for recurring payment , do i need to store user account details (i.e credt card or paypal account ) in my databas?
please do reply with you suggestion .
Thanks
1) You can do it with both, actually. If you want to stick with basic HTML forms then you'd be using Payments Standard, and they call it "Subscriptions". You can easily create a Subscription button from within your PayPal account.
If you're using the API then they call it Recurring Payments (or Recurring Billing). You would use Express Checkout for the PayPal signups, and Payments Pro if you want to handle credit cards directly on your site without any redirect to PayPal.
IPN is useful regardless of what integration method you're using, however, don't get it confused with PDT. PDT sends data back to your site's thank you page, or whatever final page you setup for it, and it only works with Payments Standard. When PDT is configured on Payments Standard, even with Auto-Return enabled, there is no guarantee the user will make it back to your return URL. IPN is very similar, but data will always be POSTed to your IPN listener regardless of whether or not the user makes it back to your site.
You'll also want to use IPN to handle updates for future payments on a subscription / recurring profile. For example, the actual payments, cancelations, suspensions, reactivations, etc.
The notify_url parameter you mentioned is used for IPN. Again, though, this is separate from PDT. A common mistake I've seen many times is when people have their PDT and IPN both set to the same URL. Then when people do make it back to your thank you page, the code actually runs twice. Once from the user actually hitting it, and once again from PayPal's IPN server hitting it. So make sure to avoid that sort of thing.
3) No, you will never save credit card details to your server. The subscription / recurring system handles that using the data that PayPal saves on their servers.
After adding stuff in shopping cart, clicking some Pay Now with PayPal button, and successful PayPal payment (PP or CC), it is logically possible that a user stays on PayPal website, if for example the Auto Return option isn't activated (or it is but it doesn't work because the user is a guest user without PP account)
The user can return to the site by clicking a link, but doesn't have to. My question is: if he doesn't, how will the site owner be aware that the user paid so that he can now send the items by post? That the site owner gets informed of being paid seems elemental to me, so I find incomprehensible that such elemental thing be left to some obscure Auto-Return option.
Please can somebody explain this to me?
This is a common challenge with any redirected payment gateway, and it's the reason most (if not all) of them implement some sort of asynchronous notification that a payment has been completed. In PayPal, this is the Instant Payment Notification (IPN). You must setup on your site either a generic IPN listener that you link to from your PayPal account profile settings or you can create a more targeted IPN listener specifically for your transactions and use the NOTIFYURL (or related) parameter in the form or API request you use to redirect to PayPal to send IPNs to that listener.
In my integrations, I never perform any order update or transaction logging when the customer returns from the site, preferring instead to wait for the IPN that I can validate and ensure came from PayPal as opposed to a spoofed return from someone trying to hack my checkout process.
For more information, see the IPN documentation: https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/documentation-tools/ipn/integration-guide/IPNIntro
Paypal provide IPN for this purpose through which we paypal send request asynchronous to your site and you can perform whichever action you want
I think the point may have been missed here. Or a problem does exist. If the purchaser uses CC, even if you have IPN set up and it works, but if the purchaser uses CC and does not click a button on the last page, which is not presented when using PP account, it is possible for the funds to go through, but no IPN, and so your website is unaware of the purchase. This last page, is an extra page that CC user gets after the page with the Pay button on it.
In this state, you can even go into IPN history, and the IPN is there, says it is sent, but it hasn't been. It does not get sent until after the purchaser clicks the button on the extra page and then they are taken to the auto return page.
I'm currently integrating the paypal recurring payment process in my website (thanks to https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_pdn_subscr_techview_outside) and, for the moment, it works.
But I have a simple question, and I don't find the answer on Internet. Let's say a user deletes his account on my website after 2 months. How can I cancel automatically his subscription ?
Thank you!
It takes a bit of effort to find, but Paypal does publish a guide on subscriptions.
To cancel someone's subscription, you need to create a link to Paypal -- see page 171 of that reference. There doesn't appear to be an API which allows you to cancel their subscription for them: they need to click a link to Paypal and cancel the subscription themselves.
The guide actually says
Paste the code onto you webpage [sic] near text that explains how subscription cancellations work.
Apparently it's possible to cancel recurring payments with the API. See:
Can you cancel a PayPal automatic payment via API? (Subscription created via Hosted button)
This is certainly more complex than the "unsubscribe" button that paypal gives you, but... it could actually work. The "unsubscribe" button requires that people's payments are coming from their PayPal account, which is not the case if they set up recurring payments on a credit card (without logging into PayPal.)
Im using Website Payments Standard so users can pay for a rating to be shown on their profile. Im also using IPN to check if the payment went through. How do I relate the two? When I get an IPN request to my listener, how do I know which user and rating it relates to?
If users are initiating payment through a buy it now or shopping cart button embedded in your site, you can set some sort of text box where the user enters their user name. this info will be sent with the Ipn. This is set up on the pay pal sure where you create the buttons.
Another method would be get their actual name from the ipn. Check the documentation for a list of variables that are sent with the ipn, there are a lot of possibilities.