I want to get the best currency exchange rate ( usd to euro ) when i withdraw my funds to bank account.The problem is that i don't want to log in every day to check it.
I want to be notified when there is a fixed change.
So,what do you think is the best way?
Unanswerable. You are asking for a means to predict the future. There is no way of knowing whether tomorrow's exchange rate will be better than today's.
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I offer a service 2 times a year. Some of my clients desire to make payments rather than pay in one lump sum. They need to choose the amount they desire to pay and when they (date) they want to pay on. I just need PayPal for the processing and also the tracking for the amount they have paid. It also needs to not accept any more funds once they have reached the set amount.
Has anyone heard of this capability?
You time and consideration.
Have a look at https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/products/paypal-payments-pro/
They implement payment by instalments on their end with Paypal Credit. I believe you will still receive the entire payment in one go, but the customer will have to pay it off to Paypal directly. Alternatively, you may be able to hack something with recurring payment, though you would need to cancel it once the total amount has been reached; it's definitely not meant for that.
Regardless, you are probably better off contacting paypal support for this, since this isn't really a programming specific question.
I am offering an annual program and want to automatically withdraw payments from my clients via PayPal. I see how to create a subscription to do this.
However, it charges them one month after they pay the first installment. I really want to bill all of my clients on the 1st of the month for 12 months, to simply the accounting for myself and them.
Is there a way to create an automatic payment on the 1st of every month without asking all of my clients to pay on that specific day?
I called Paypal and they said it would require html coding, but couldn't tell me HOW that might be accomplished for someone like me who doesn't write code.
If you're using the Recurring Payments API you can specify the PROFILESTARTDATE and set it to whatever future date you want. The profile will be become active immediatly, but it won't start until that date, which is when the first payment would be made.
Just keep in mind if somebody signs up on the 2nd of the month you'll basically be giving them a free month.
Here's my scenario , would love it if someone will tell me if it's possible and how to do it :
I have a customer with active profile for a monthly recurring payment , I now decide to give this customer X amount of days free by delaying his payment due date (not by changing his payment amount) , is it possible? (note that X can be any number)
if so then how? (which API? documentation? example? etc.)
Thank you very much for your help
It's not actually possible. Once a users signs up for a recurring payment, it's set in stone. You can't change the amount they pay, you can't change the frequency of payments, anything.
You can set up a new profile, and cancel the users recurring payment on the old profile, and tell them to pay on the new profile (which will set up a new recurring payment on a new schedule), but that's about it.
It's not very flexible.
You can change your due date. I just did by calling them. It takes two billing cycles for it to be changed. They can help forgive you one time if you call and going to be late. So yes you can change your due date
I called to change my billing date. It takes up to three months and for that period you will be billed on the existing date and the new date. 2 payments will be required. In these days of computerisation this seems to be ridiculous. So will leave it until I have a zero balance, and then change the due date.
I am working on a startup in which the merchant has to disburse funds to customers periodically, from time to time. Think of this as customer loyalty program, cashback etc.
Does dwolla support the ability to transfer money from merchant to customer?
Technically it seems the same as from one bank account to another but just wanted to confirm if that is the case. (Is there a refund API that can help with this?)
Also, would something like this be against the terms of use ? Is there a possibility of running into compliance bottle necks?
Appreciate your help in this as this would help me choose dwolla as our payment processor.
Thanks and Best Regards,
I'll let Michael chime as well but the generic answer is yes. You can do that. You'd simply make an outgoing payment from a bank (or dwolla balance) to the receivers e-mail or phone #.
Not against the terms at all. Let us know if you need any guidance during the process.
The scenario you're describing sounds completely legitimate to me. The only caveat I can see here, is the fact you'll have to store the merchant's PIN number in order to periodically send money from their account, without their direct involvement (or am I understanding this wrong?) - our ToS requires that you hash/encrypt said PIN in your DB.
Regarding a refund API - we don't have one yet. You'l have to simply use the send() method, and if you're so inclined, feel free to break the amount to $10 chunk to avoid any fees.
Bottom line: you should be good to go.
Does anyone know a way to get the currency exchange rates for paypal?
We have custom shopping cart and use Paypal (Website Payments Standard) to handle payments.
Our 'home' currency is Euro, but we would like to present our customers the option to pay in different currencies (USD, CAD, AUD and GBP).
PayPal offers the option to:
a) automatically convert our Euro quoted prices to, for example, USD upon checkout
b) checkout in USD directly
With option a):
We get paid in Euro, the customer pays for the currency exchange (good).
The customer does not know what he/she is going to be charged in USD until checkout. (bad)
With option b)
The customer pays in USD, then the currency is converted into EUR and we pay the the currency exchange.
The customer never has to worry about the different currencies (excellent)
We do not know the exchange rate PayPal is going to use so we cannot quote the correct prices to our customer (showstopper)
So my question is:
Does anybody know a way to get the PayPal exchange rates?
or
Does anybody know how to make a good estimate?
Update:
PayPal updates it's exchange rate 2 times a day. (at least, that is what they state). They use the Interbank Exchange Rate provided by ??? and add a 2.5% spread above this rate to determine their retail foreign exchange rates.
Unforunately, there the Interbank Exchange Rates vary from source to source and from minute to minute.
We have been monitoring the PayPal exchange rates and cross referenced them with the Official reference rates provides by the European Central Bank. the results vary widely, somewhere from 1 to 6 ! percent...
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_convert-currency-withdrawal is a (needs login) page on Paypal where you can perform currency conversions at Paypal's rates.
I just found this:
https://www.x.com/thread/38451 (This link is now broken)
so it look like there is something you could use
https://www.x.com/docs/DOC-1400 (This link is now broken)
https://www.x.com/docs/DOC-1401 (This link is now broken)
I also found this
http://apipay.net/easyapi/index.php?sid=paypal&id=nvp_adpay&ac=convertcurrency (This link is now appears to be broken also)
and there is someone that already posted a question about that
PHP example for PayPal Adaptive Payments ConvertCurrency API
Regarding getting a good estimate; PayPal says here that they base their rate on the "Interbank Exchange Rate" and that "Customers may use these rates as a reference".
However they of course go on to say that these rates are not guaranteed, and if you want the precise rate you need to see what rate they apply in the transaction.
I am not aware of any way of obtaining the precise rate programmatically.
I suppose you could make your own payment of $0.01 every day and observe the exchange rate applied - but even that assumes they only update their rate every day.
I contacted their customer service and they explained, that at least in my region, they added 3.5% over the XE.com exchange rates. I was able to hand this to my accountant and use it as evidence of a tax-deductible business expense.
Their exchange rates are ~10% off the daily spot rates in the currencies I use (THB/USD). And although I have USD bank accounts they refuse to transfer USD to my USD accounts. Not sure if that is their policy for all countries / all currencies though, but for THB/USD they are inflexible.
Another thing to be aware of when using paypal - their "seller protection" is limited depending on what you sell and through what channels. In other words, you need to do a certain amount of fraud checking yourself to avoid shipping to customers who have used stolen credit card #s.
As you say, they base the "PayPal exchange rate" on the "recent currency conversion rate". In my experience, they add 3-4%.
The only place I found to get the PayPal exchange rate is here but it needs you to be logged in.
I've created a publicly visible Google doc that lists the historical rates.
This allows you to track the PayPal exchange rates so that you know when best to withdraw or transfer your money. Please contribute to the data by adding today's rates into this form.
If you are strictly interested in conversion from and to Euro, the European Central Bank has a public (and free) xml document that is updated daily:
http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml
Parsing it is easy:
$XML=simplexml_load_file("http://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml");
foreach($XML->Cube->Cube->Cube as $rates){
if($rates["currency"] == 'USD'){
$rate = ''.$rates["rate"];
// do your thing with it here
}
}
I found paypal adaptive payment service to integrate currency exchange rates on website but it is not working correctly on live account. You can go through the details from the link https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/products/adaptive-payments/
Well, the following service should be useful for the conversion: http://rate-exchange.herokuapp.com/. Our company uses this for many live projects including an Chrome extension which seems running so far.