I'am having troubles about how to handle the paypal recurrent payment system.
I followed every instruction in the website, but once i create the profile, paypal puts it in pending, making me doubt about the reliability of the service itself.
I tried to look over the internet but i didn't really get how this should work...
i made the first call with SetExpressCheckout in order to create the request, when the token is returned, i send the token to the paypal page, the user confirms the payment, then i call the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile method to confirm the operation (passing PAYERID and TOKEN and setting the AMT value for the first payment and the PROFILESTARTDATE as now +1 month for the future payments)
Now when i try to read the response from the last call (or if i go to the buyer/seller paypal account) i see that the payment is in pending and i have to wait an undefined amount of time before this payment is activated.
Now the real question is: can i trust the fact that even if the payment is in pending, i'll receive the payment and so i can set set the user as member or i have to check and wait until the status is 'active' with the GetRecurringPaymentsProfileDetails method?
PS: i'm doing this in the sandbox version, maybe the official version is a bit faster and more reliable?
Thank you!
In Sandbox as in Live when you call CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile you will also get the response in which it will give you the status of the profile (ActiveProfile or PendingProfile). When the status is in Penidng it means that the system is in process of creating the recurring payment profile. You can then check your IPN messages for an update. It is normal but obviously if you notice that all the profiles you create get into Pending and never activate then there could be a bug but should not be the case. In here is the PayPal technical guide for this API: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/merchant/CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile_API_Operation_NVP/
Related
I am building a paypal subscription system but i have some difficulties to understand some points. When using sandbox i can't simulate a payment denial process so when the payment is made, paypal redirect me to my "approval url callback" and a billing agreement is created.
So i want to know , in a real situation, will paypal redirect me to the approval url and create this billing agreement even if the payment didn't occur yet ? or this one can be created if and only if the payment is accepted ? (So if paypal denied the payment the billing agreement will never be created)
In my case, my customers will need to access to some paid features of my website so, should i wait for the "ipn webhook notification (PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED)" which can take several minutes to be fired to my endpoint, or can i grant access immediately after the billing agreement is created ?
Which is the most secure thing to do ?
thanks.
If the user cancels the checkout, Paypal will redirect to your cancel URL.
But the failed payment cases are not clear to me either. I believe that the agreement will be created even if the payment fails, since it needs to exist for the payment attempt to be done, but I don't work at Paypal :).
My approach is to activate the subscription on a successful redirect no matter what, [edit: the execute response returns an agreement_details.next_billing_date in the past, so you can't use that] with a short initial subscription expiration (4h). When our webhook receives a PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED message, we fetch the agreement billing agreement details, and update the subscription expiration to the new agreement_details.next_billing_date. But if the webhook receives a PAYMENT.SALE.DENIED, we just let the subscription expire.
HTH.
While playing in sandbox and setting up recurring payments via SetExpressCheckout (as suggested in docs) I can successfully create BillingAgreement and recieve a token. Now after user follows a link like https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_express-checkout&token=[token goes here] , agrees to all terms and conditions etc., he is automatically redirected to returnUrl provided in SetExpressCheckout method, and additionally this token value is appended to the returnUrl.
So far so good. Now the question is - can I rely on the fact that returnUrl will be called at all times? F. e., what happens when for some reason user's browser refuses or fails to be redirected to the specified url?
As far as I can understand from PayPal documentation, you cannot use IPN to notify you of new subscriptions, initiated by user, though clearly IPNs would be an ideal option. I have tried to provide notifyUrl when I compose SetExpressCheckout request, but it is not being hit. Same IPN works fine for "pay" method which I use for one-time purchases.
I think you're missing a step in there. The recurring payments profile doesn't get created while the buyer is on the PayPal website -- you have to wait for the buyer to come back to your return URL, then call CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile to actually create the recurring payment. If you never call CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile, then no recurring payment gets created -- which is probably why you're not getting any IPNs.
When a paypal recurring payment is suspend an IPN with either one of the following txn_type will be sent
recurring_payment_suspended
recurring_payment_suspended_due_to_max_failed_payment
Question: Is there an IPN to notify of a re-activation, like:
recurring_payment_reactivated
I could not find any info on SO, Google and https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/documentation-tools/ipn/integration-guide/IPNandPDTVariables
Or does anyone know why PayPal would provide an IPN to tell us when a recurring payment is suspended
but not when its re-activated.
I just tested this scenario on the sandbox. I created a new profile using CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile and I immediately got the recurring_payment_profile_created IPN as expected.
I then suspended the profile using ManageRecurringPaymentsProfileStatus and immediately got the recurring_payment_suspended IPN as expected.
I then reactivated the profile using ManageRecurringPaymentsProfileStatus, but I did NOT get any new IPN from this action.
Based on those findings I would say, no, you will not get one in production either.
That said, I always recommend using the GetRecurringPaymentsProfileDetails API to check the current status of a profile any time users log in to a paid area of your site (or attempt to access anything that requires a valid profile.)
I have several PayPal Adaptive payments with an "EXPIRED" status (in an application that accepts payments on behalf of a seller). They are explicitly approved payments, meaning money changes hands as soon as the sender accepts the payment.
The documentation for the PaymentDetails API call doesn't mention EXPIRED in the list of possible statuses.
Could you direct me to some other documentation or explain what this status means?
Some more googling brought up this forum thread:
A status of expired means that a PayKey has expired and cannot be used. A PayKey has a life of three hours, after which it cannot be used to complete the payment.
If this occurs you will need to generate a new PayKey with a new trackingID using the Pay API call as you did previously. The reason the tracking ID is not released back and allowed to be used again is because it would cause issues with dublicate tracking ID's in yours and our system.
So, an EXPIRED Adaptive Payment is one that has been created but never paid, so you can safely create a duplicate new one instead.
I cant find anny clear documentations about this.
If you use paypal express checkout, when a payment is pending what happens next?
Does paypal sends you by IPN an update if the states changes, do you have options?
Let say you do an DoExpressCheckoutPayment (with NVP)
and you get this:
&PAYMENTSTATUS=Pending
&PENDINGREASON= ECHECK //The payment is pending because it was made by an eCheck that has not yet cleared.
&REASONCODE=None
So you've made the payment and you want to wait until its cleared? What should you do next.
Update Some (external documentation) I found only sugest you could use (IPN?) to handle pending payments.
"If the Do Express Checkout Payment PENDINGREASON response is a value
other than none or completed , the payment is pending. Typically,
this means the customer has paid with aneCheck. In such a case, funds
are not guaranteed, and you should not ship or deliver items or
services until the payment has successfully completed. NOTE:
PayPal recommends that you block eChecks as a payment method if you
are unable tohandle pending state payments.To find out the status of a
pending payment, you can:
Submit an Inquiry transaction.
Check the status using PayPal Manager. See PayPal Manager online help
for details."
The paypal sandbox seems to have the option to check IPN messages for the express checkout type. The only correlation (if its ment to be used this way) between the DoExpressCheckoutPayment and the IPN seems you can use the "custom" field to keep track of a pending status. The txn_id (ipn) isn't given in DoExpressCheckoutPayment (nvp). Does any one have any experience with this?
The transaction ID is most certainly given in DoExpressCheckoutPayment, even if the PAYMENTSTATUS=Pending. A pending payment is still a transaction.
So yes, you would be notified via IPN when the transaction is completed. This typically takes a few working days.
Once it has completed, you can correlate the transaction from DoExpressCheckoutPayment to the IPN you will have received via the txn_id in the IPN.
Note: If you want to test a 'Pending' payment in the PayPal Sandbox, simply go to https://developer.paypal.com/ > Test account and click on 'Payment review' for the seller account you're testing with.
Once payment review is enabled on that seller account, any transactions it receives will be in a 'Pending' state.
Simply disable payment review to release the tranasctions afterwards.
I thought i'd add my two pence worth of thoughts to this.
I was getting a pending return status using Express Checkout via the dotNet SDK, according to the doc's and examples I should have been getting an 'approved' status.
I couldn't figure out why but it turned out to be because I was passing through a new currency, in our case 'GBP'. I had to log in as the facilitator sandbox account and decide what to do with the new currency.. convert it or setup a new balance in the currency. Once I did this, and set it as the default action, the pending return status no longer occurred.
hope that helps someone!
One thing not noted here and I haven't found anything else to confirm.. is that Paypal Express API doesn't support passing in the NOTIFYURL with the code. So you have to use the hardcoded IPN url set in your paypal account. This of course causes issues because you need a common callback file that can redirect to the individual payment options.
For example, if you are using Paypal Express AND Paypal Advanced.. Neither of those properly support a notifyurl passed in using the code. Paypal Advanced claims to, but it doesn't seem to work. So there needs to be a common IPN callback file that handles the redirection to each.
Unless someone else can confirm a working notify url for Express Checkout variable that can be passed in the code?