I want to use the PayPal REST API to offer subscriptions on my website. According to the documentation a billing plan is required in order to create a billing agreement with a user.
While the documentation explains how to create billing plans/agreements, I still have a few questions which the documentation does not answer:
Is a billing plan used for multiple billing agreements? For example, you create a billing plan for each service on your website and let users subscribe to this.
Does each billing agreement need a new billing plan? (in contrast to the previous question)
If I delete a billing plan, does this also remove all dependent billing agreements?
Pretty late answer but I am facing the same problem right now and found this link. The article is from 2014 but still can be useful because explains a little bit of what you are asking about. Reading it I think that billing plan can be used for multiple agreements. You just need to create the plan and then use the ID for agreements.
Anyway, I suggest you to use sandbox mode to test all features.
Also, if you found another answer which explains the mechanism better, please post it here.
Hope I could help.
Related
I want to implement a pay as you go with Paypal, as I read the subscriptions API we need to create a plan and product, and as I understand it, it works based on the regular payments which obviously we don't want that we want if the user's budget is below a certain amount we recharge the user by a fixed amount again, can anybody guide me how to approach and implement pay as go using Paypal?
You are correct, subscriptions bill on a regular schedule whereas what you are describing is the ability to bill an arbitrary amount at any time.
That feature is called "reference transactions", or sometimes "billing agreements". It is not enabled for PayPal business accounts by default. To request the feature, the owner of the PayPal account should contact PayPal's general business support (note: not technical support) and explain the business need for this reference transactions feature.
If it's approved for the account, PayPal can then guide you on which API integration to use; potentially something like the newest v2/vault.
I've been looking for a solution everywhere after I saw PayPal mentioned Metered Billing on their developer page.
I would like to use PayPal for my SaaS, implementing a metered billing solution for billing my customers on a monthly basis a variable amount depending on their usage rate of the service.
I do remember an option for authorizing PayPal to give some software permission to execute payments without any further action from the side of the customer. Unfortunately, I cannot find any valid documentation, and not sure if is possible at all right now.
Is metered billing an option using the PayPal API?
Thank you so much!
What you are looking for is a "Reference Transactions" solution, which use PayPal Billing Agreements. It can be tested in sandbox, but to use it in live, the business account would need to be approved for this feature by PayPal. To do this the account owner would need to contact their PayPal account manager or PayPal's general customer support (not MTS), and explain the business need for this feature.
As far as implementing the solution, the only public documentation is for classic APIs: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/express-checkout/ec-set-up-reference-transactions/ . Any newer API or vault solution isn't publicly documented currently, though I have seen some links surface about a v2 vault solution.
So, you can always contact PayPal's support and ask if there's something they'd rather you implement than classic APIs. The first hurdle is the business approval for the feature mentioned earlier.
Sorry, if this topic is too unspecific, but actually I did not know where ask else. If this question is not ok, please feel free to close it.
My question is, if it is possible to execute / approve multiple billing agreements from one user at one purchase at paypal?
We created a shop where the user can buy different virtual products for different periods. If a user buys 2 or more products we want to create for each product a billing agreement (i.e. 12 months). If I understand the paypal API correctly, every product (subscription / billing agreement) has to be approved independently.
Is there a way to let the user approve the billing agreement once for all products at all? Or can we create a billing plan with multiple products in it?
Thanks for your help in advance.
According to PayPal, it is not possible to accomplish this using the latest version of the SDKs. It should be possible, however, to accomplish this using the currently-deprecated SOAP version of SDKs. There are several API calls related to the creation of Billing Agreements, but two calls that are required for basic situations: SetExpressCheckout and CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile. All of the supporting documentation for this calls using the SOAP API clearly state that there is a limit of 10 billing agreements per transaction. For example, this is taken from the documentation from CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile:
RecurringPayments | ProfileDetails
(Required) You can include up to 10 recurring payments profiles
per request. The order of the profile details must match the order
of the billing agreement details specified in the SetExpressCheckout
request.
I am in the process of attempting this with the PHP SDK using Express Checkout specifically and I will provide an update on whether I can in fact get this working.
I apologize that this is not as clear an answer as it should be, but the documentation surrounding this question provided by the developers is directly conflicting and IMO there should be some explanation of that here.
I have some questions about subscription functionality using REST API. We have implemented recurring payments using "Express Checkout NVP/SOAP Integration" but for us it isn't optimal, because:
Webhooks easier and more usable then IPN messages;
We can't force customers to pay from PayPal balance.
That's why I want to rewrite it with REST API. I think the flow will be like:
User press button and we make the first request to get auth token;
Create billing plan;
Activate billing plan;
Create billing agreement;
Because of we're using PayPal payments here we redirect the customer to approve payment;
Execute billing agreement.
My questions are:
Is this flow correct?
To redirect customer for approving payment we need to make four requests to PayPal API servers, is it normal?
Should I create and activate a billing plan for every customer or I can use one plan for all customers?
If so can I create the plan in the merchant's profile page or I can do it only programmatically?
Let me see if I can answer your questions and provide some samples.
Yes, that flow is correct for the first request. If you already have a plan that you'd like to subscribe people to created, you can skip those billing plan steps. More on that below.
For the REST APIs, yes that's the normal flow for PayPal. Think of the plan as setting up the architecture of the payment that you'd like to offer (such as a subscription plan for a service). You set this up once and then can subscribe many people to that same subscription plan using a billing agreement.
If the details of the plan are the same for each person, then create one plan and then use a billing agreement for each person to subscribe them all to that same plan.
I haven't seen an integration of this with the profile system, but it's an interesting idea. For the time being, as far as I know you'll need to do this programmatically.
I've also created some new quickstart guides on the site that should help through creating the billing plan and agreements:
Billing plans: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/quickstart/create-billing-plan/
Billing agreements: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/quickstart/create-billing-agreement/
I have a more practical example of this billing plan / agreement integration in a Slack bot payment sample, if that helps: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/service-integrations/slack-bot/subscribe/
Well, I didn't really know how to call this...
I have been surfing PayPal's developer documentation for a while now, but there is nothing that speaks to me with direction as to achieving what I am looking for.
It's probably well documented, but I don't grasp it well enough yet to make sense while reading each part separately.
I have read about Preapproval, though it seem to require that I send the customer's browser to the designated PayPal address.
I have thought about creating a database with credit card information, but that is too scary -- so I am looking to see if there is a way for a customer to allow me to do unattended charges to their PayPal account, much like I would be able to do if I had a database with customer credit card information.
Any direction would be appreciated.
Yes, this is possible. There are two options:
PayPal Express Checkout with a Billing Agreement
This works similarly to Preapprovals (which is Adaptive Payments, a different set of API's). You would need to redirect the buyer to PayPal in order to accept the billing agreement, and from then on you can bill the user using to DoReferenceTransaction API.
PayPal DoDirectPayment (Website Payments Pro) with Reference Transactions
You would need to have an existing transaction, and instead of a billing agreement ID, you would submit a prior transaction ID to the DoReferenceTransaction API. You can then re-bill the user on the card details which are stored with PayPal (up to 1 year. assuming the card details are still valid).
Do note that both options require you having access to the DoReferenceTransaction API, which you will not have access to by default.
For further information on the API itself, see https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_nvp_r_DoReferenceTransaction
Important: You will need to call in to get Billing Agreements activated. Good luck finding someone that knows what you need (no really) :-)
You will eventually find someone who knows what DoReferenceTransaction is and then once you've finally found them they'll probably tell you they can only activate it in the sand box and transfer you to someone in the Business Office. They'll have to then submit it to approval with someone else. Est. Total call time 59 minutes 8 seconds.
The guy I just spoke with said he's probably handled only 2 call in a year about DoReferenceTransaction - so you may need to ask around. They have other subscription billing and that's not what you want.
Also realize that approval is not instant and you may need to have established history. The guy who helped me said this is the best number
888 215 5506. Be sure to explain why you need them carefully and try to reassure them you're legitimate. A reputable website behind the domain for your paypal email will probably help.
Good news: I applied for Reference Transactions Friday and was approved today (Sunday). This was for two accounts - one which had only been established the day before.
Thank you for contacting us about enabling reference transactions on
your PayPal account.
I am pleased to inform you that your request has been approved. You
can begin using this feature immediately.
If you have further questions regarding this email, please contact a
Merchant Services Specialist at 1-888-221-1161.
Sincerely,
AJ Merchant Risk Operations
I was trying to do this recently and I found this question with no luck because the Express Checkout with a Billing Agreement method is deprecated since January 1, 2017.
There is a new REST method called Vault payment methods that recently entered open beta and it's not in the official documentation (to this date), so I leave the link to Create transactions when your buyer isn't present, in case someone needs it.
The process it's explained in the documentation but basically, you need to create a payment token (the source can be a PayPal account or a credit card), and then use that token to capture the payment.