This is my first time using the PayPal API so go easy on me.
The case I am trying to handle is as follows:
My customers can purchase software licenses that can either be one time payments, or yearly payments.
They can multiple products to the cart, and each product can have either one of the pricing plans mentioned above.
If I understand correctly, "payments" in the API handle one time transactions, and "billing plans" are used for recurring payments.
Is it possible to processes both in one call to the API? If not, is there a different way to achieve this?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! TIA!
Not one API call, but you can do it in one checkout flow with multiple API calls.
For PayPal wallet payments (logging in to PayPal and paying) I would recommend using Express Checkout w/ Recurring Payments.
With that you would be using SetExpressCheckout, GetExpressCheckoutDetails, and then either DoExpressCheckoutPayment, CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile, or a combination of both of those depending on the products in the card and whether they need one-time payment or recurring.
The CRPP call will allow you to setup a recurring profile and include an "initial payment" which would be charged when the profile is created. This could be used as the one time payment if you want, and then you wouldn't need the DECP call.
Alternatively, you could use DECP to process the one time payment and then follow that up with CRPP to create the profile. There are advantages and disadvantages to the different methods depending on your business needs.
For setting up profiles with direct credit cards you'll need PayPal Payments Pro. In this case you would either use the same CRPP call mentioned above, but it would be used by itself and include the credit card details. Or, depending on the version of Pro they put you on, which depends on the version of PayPal account you have, you might end up using PayFlow instead.
If you're working with PHP this PayPal PHP SDK will make all of those API calls very quick and easy for you.
I know that's a pretty broad answer, but that's because it's a pretty broad question. :)
Related
Im trying set up recurring payment on my site by using Paypal Express Checkout. I did read through the official docs and I couldnt find anything useful related to recurring payment.
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/express-checkout/integration-jsv4/add-paypal-button/
Im just wondering does Express Checkout support recurring payment? If so, how can I achieve that or Where can I get some good example to start with?
Thank you for your help in advance. Much appreciated
Cheers
We have a similar issue before. You might wanted to take a look at this thread.
I'm trying to understand the use case here. When you say recurring payment for express checkout,it has to be something a customer is buying regularly like restocking an item, in that case it's not an express checkout, it's a recurring purchase by a returning customer. They must have opted to restock at a regular interval like every 30 days, 2 months etc. They also must be registered users on your website.
So your logic must include — Checking all the customers who have set up an automatic purchase for an item.
—Check their frequency of purchase and charge them for the amount of the item at that frequency.
—For this purpose PayPal has a REST API :
This is the accurate place to look for to implement PayPal recurring payments:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/payments/#payment_create
In case they also allow you to authorize payments through the following API
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/payments/#authorization
you could use it as well.
But at least this narrows down your choices in terms of regular payment authorization.
This API will allow you to request PayPal services to authorize payment on a regular basis for that customer. You will still have to have your own logic to check the 'subscription' for your products and the intervals.
—The CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile API Operation (NVP) at the link below looks to be for personal payments. For example something an Inventory Management System will do.
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/merchant/CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile_API_Operation_NVP/
It's an API specific to adding recurring payments functionality.
Since you're a developer, PayPal Developers' Resources will answer any queries you have regarding the API functionality and usage. You will have to just know what to ask for. You are their B2B customer trying to understand their API system. You can also file a bug on their Developer portal if you're not getting proper answers.
I am using the PayPal REST API and would like to create a transaction that includes a combination of recurring and one-time payments in a single transaction.
According to the documentation for the NVP integration, it seems such a transaction is possible. However, I'm not sure how to accomplish the same using the REST API. I have searched the REST API documentation as well as the .NET SDK examples and cannot find an example of a transaction that uses a mix of recurring and one-time payments.
Our use case: We process transactions for downloadable software - most of the products are one-time purchases, but some of the products (such as anti-virus products) have a recurring billing component associated with them. As such, we need to process a single transaction where one of the items is a regular purchase, and the other is a part of a recurring plan. We plan to process these transactions using the "PayPal" payment method (i.e. not direct credit card). Specifically, we'll be using Express Checkout.
Any guidance would be much appreciated. Thank you!
Based on what you're doing about, here's what I think your best course of action might be:
When you have a user checking out that may have some multi-month subscriptions, and some single time subscriptions, you set up a new billing plan with each item to be purchased. For the subscriptions, you set up an entry that is set to multiple months, and for a single payment you set a single month payment (see https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/create-billing-plan/ for an example of multiple entries).
Next, you need to execute that plan for the user via a billing agreement (https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/create-billing-agreement/). Within the billing agreement you can set the start date to execute immediately, which should complete the checkout process for both billing orders right then.
Let me know if that works out for your scenario.
I just noticed that paypal now has a number of solutions to accept payment, and per this own page, it doesn't really compare their difference in a nice way:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/accept-payments/
Does anyone happen to know (I am using C#/.net, but JS is also OK), if I want to have a customized checkout, in which I can customize the look and feel, and allow customers to enter/select shipping address (which is saved in the site's own database), which paypal method I should use?
Thanks! (also if any document that explain better the differences of the above different ways of accept payment, it would be great!)
If you want to completely customize everything then the PayPal Payments Pro Payflow Edition is a viable solution.
Here is the link to Sample Code C# is one of the programming languages offered in the Sample Payflow Code.
You will need to build your form/shopping cart and then the Sample Code can be used to make the payment request to process the payments. The Entire Transaction will take place place on your website from start to finish.
If you want PayPal to handle the payment portion with a customer leaving your site to use PayPal as the Payment method and then returning to your site to complete the payment, Express Checkout is the other option that will work.
You can make an API call to PayPal to get the Shipping information from PayPal and then store the shipping info in your own database.
Here is the Express Checkout Sample Code
I need to create a subscriptions system in my app, where users can subscribe to a certain package and they must be billed monthly.
Moreover, I need to charge their credit card automatically, and without requiring them to have a PayPal account.
I read about https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=merchant/erp_overview, but is seems it's not available anymore as I click on sign up and it gives me an error ("Sorry, this feature is not available at this time.").
Then I've read about PayPal Standard Payments, which have a subscription method (https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/subscribe_buttons/)
From what I can read there is that this is what is suitable for my use case, and it says that I need to enable the above mentioned service, which it doesn't work.
Can someone point me in the right direction on what service should I use from PayPal in order to implement recurring payments (basically my users will subscribe themselves to a service on my website, and I need to charge them monthly).
Thank you.
If you're wanting to handle credit cards directly I would highly recommend going with Payments Pro w/ Recurring Payments APIs.
You'll have to pay a monthly fee to get it all activated, and it's a little bit more expensive than what you were looking at, but it will give you much greater flexibility building your application(s) into various experiences for your buyers.
I need a help regarding paypal.
That is. Once I have logged in with paypal and made payment, Then for another payment no login will be asked, Direct payment will be done using paypal. Please comment your suggestions. Thanks in Advance.
You have a couple of options for this.
First, you could take a look at Preapproval, which is part of the Adaptive Payments platform. It allows users to create a Preapproval profile that your application can then use to trigger payments at any time without further approval as long as the payment fits within the guidelines of the preapproval profile.
Another option would be to look into Express Checkout with Reference Transactions. This would give you a little bit more flexibility and would be more in line what you're asking for, I think. Users would agree during their first payment with you to allow you to auto-charge this same account in the future. Then you would use DoReferenceTransaction to trigger future payments based on that "billing agreement" which is what it would be called that way.
I would recommend going with Express Checkout, and you might want to look at Digital Goods, too, which just adds some more functionality with quicker PayPal checkout in various ways.
It's all handled through a few simple API calls, so don't let all the info scare you.
My PHP class library for PayPal will make all of the API calls very simple for you regardless of which method you choose. Again, though, I'd recommend Express Checkout.