I have recently been given the task to create a proof of concept that we can create adaptive payments within our system, but I have come to a stumbling block - just one!
When the API call is fired off to set up the pre-approval, the returned data does not extend past the 12 month period, regardless of if I go past that date.
I have read online that the limit is 12 months, but then I checked my own pre-approved list and I have an active pre-approved payment set up with Skype, from 2009, that is still active, so I figured it must be possible, so I called paypal.
They informed me that you can do it with Express Checkout, but for the life of me, I can not find how to allow periods of more than 12 months.
So the main question is: Does anybody know how to allow dates for the end date, to extend past the 12 months period?
The secondary question is: Express Checkout appears to be a separate payment system, so how are they linked in this instance?
Adaptive and Express Checkout (aka Pro) are separate payment products, both built on top of PayPal's core payment processing. The APIs and the specific features of the two products differ but they both result in similar PayPal payments, meaning things like how money is drawn from the sender's account is all shared.
But the two products create different billing agreements and features definitely vary between the two products.
I'm not familiar enough with the Adaptive product to comment on agreement length time limits and whether they could be changed; you already had PayPal on the phone, and they would be the people to ask.
But the Pro product definitely does not have any such limits.
Most of the big integrations (Skype, iTunes, Netflix, etc) are with Pro, so it should be a Pro billing agreement that you have with Skype :-).
You said that your requirement was to make adaptive payments. I'm not sure if you need specific features of Adaptive Payments (e.g. split payments?) but if not, I would recommend switching to Pro.
Indefinite period billing authorizations are now available via Braintree.
Related
I am looking for some advice on how to add Paypal as a mean of payment on our website.
I found this page which matches our use case of recurring payments of varying amounts of money on a varying schedule.
However, this is deprecated and I could not find the equivalent concept in the new APIs.
The billing agreement concept in the new API seems to be used with billing plans only which must define a specific schedule of payments which we don't want. We'd like our users to authorize us to charge their Paypal account in the future. The amounts are not defined, the schedule is not defined. We want to trigger the payments in the future.
How can we do that?
Is there a way to get an authorization token that we can then reuse to create payments of different amounts?
Thanks
The REST APIs support Billing Agreements and Billing Plans. Billing Agreements are what you're after, and Billing Plans would be more like a subscription with the same amount being charged at the same interval.
That said, while it does display that Express Checkout Classic is now deprecated, that's not exactly true. They do hope to move people into REST at some point, but it's going to be a very long time. There are way too many people still using Classic, and they are still adding new features to it, too. Also, things like Guest Checkout are not yet available in REST, so you have to do that with Classic.
I still use Classic myself, and I would still recommend it as of today.
I need someone to point me in the right direction of what is the best Paypal product to use and the associated functions I need to accomplish my project.
I have a site where a user can signup for a internet phone service with a set monthly fee, lets say $200 for 1000 minutes.
The problem I have is that:
1. The first month is pro-rated so the amount may change.
2. If a user of my site goes over their allotted minutes I will charge them an overage fee in their next billing cycle, so the recurring payment may be different also.
From what I read I need to use adaptive payments is this correct, what functions should I use for creating, capturing and receiving payments.
Please help, I'm really in a bind.
There are many products that will do this. Avoid searching for "Recurring Payments" as that is generally used to refer to specific, relatively fixed payment schedules (like subscriptions) that you set up once with the payment partner (PayPal) and they execute the payments on that schedule for you. These schedules can be configured somewhat flexibly (e.g. free or reduced initial payment) but require that you can state the schedule & amounts in advance.
If you have more variable needs to collect payments from your users then you generally manage the timing and amount of the payments yourself; then you just need a mechanism for billing the user, ie a billing agreement.
PayPal products that support some form of billing agreements include PayPal Reference Transactions, PayPal Adaptive Payments, and the PayPal RESTful Payments suite.
Getting into opinion territory here, but of these three I would recommend either Reference Transaction (as the longest-standing, most mature and widely used solution) or the RESTful payments suite (as the latest and greatest solution) over Adaptive.
I am having nightmare figuring out which payment sdk to follow to charge my customers on daily basis for the due outstanding to them from my application which varies(metered charging my customer).
the recurring payment only helps to pay the fixed amount for certain billing cycles.but i have variable amount to charge daily.
Is there any best approach to charge my customers on daily basis for the amount due to them from my software for the digital service i provide to them.
Thanks in advance
any suggestions and comments are welcome.
PayPal offers 3 integration types:
1. Express Checkout (the most common)
2. Adaptive Payments
3. PayPal Payments Pro
You're trying option #1, which lacks support for variable pries.
Both Adaptive Payments and PayPal Payments Pro offer recurring charges with dynamic amounts, but require PayPal's approval and quite a bit of paperwork. If you're approved, the APIs are pretty simple in both cases.
May I suggest some easier alternatives?
1. Use Recurly who are already approved for #2 above (adaptive payments). Other good alternatives are BrainTree and Stripe.
2. Change your pricing policy to a monthly charge of $X, granting a set of tokens. The user can upgrade to a higher plan to get more tokens every month.
I am wondering is this even possible or is there a simple way to do this. I am building a file-sharing site like Droplr or CloudApp and by fun chance unlike those two sites I do not offer fixed pricing, instead I offer pay-per-use billing on the amount of storage the customer uses up. But there is a small yearly fee for plans.
So lets say customer selects Tier 1 - Basic Plan. The plan allows for 5GB max file size, $5/yr fee and $1.00/gb
How would I go about charging the customer for this? Sure the first $5/yr can processed fairly easy and added to PayPal subscription and recurring payments, but should there be 2nd subscription for the storage?
I would recommend taking a look at the Adaptive Payments API, specifically Preapproval and Pay.
That will allow people to setup preapproved payments with you based on criteria set when the profile is created. Then you can charge them at any time with variable amounts as long as they fall within the profile's criteria.
Another option would be to utilize Reference Transactions (DoReferenceTransaction) after running an original Auth or Sale through Express Checkout or Payments Pro.
I am trying to use the Recurring payment API offered by PayPal.
I have a scenario which I am not able to address directly. It goes like this.
We have a website where we sell some services. Now the services are charged per user license. A user can buy/cancel user license in between. We want to offer the customer a recurring billing option. We have to notice here that the amount may vary each billing cycle based on the number of user licenses the customer uses during that cycle.
Is there any way I can achieve this using PayPal recurring Payment API's.
I realize this is a very old post, but it still shows up for Google searches, so I thought I'd add:
Paypal does allow you to do this now, using their new adaptive payments api.
Authorize.net also has a service that might work called Customer Information Manager.
The recurring payment option is a fixed amount that the customer pre-agrees to pay each month (or period). To do what you're trying to do, a customer would have to pre-agree to pay whatever amount you decide to charge at a later time. This means pre-authorizing an unknown payment amount, which will not be allowed by any payment service.
Your only options are:
Bill the variable amount each month (i.e. no subscription).
Set up a subscription where the monthly amount is the maximum that could potentially be billed, and then refund the difference each month.
Good luck with #2 - I would never agree to such a thing as a customer, personally.
What you're looking for is covered in the UK by the Direct Debit system, however given the potential for abuse it's very tightly controlled and there are a lot of restrictions and regulations governing it.
I'd strongly suggest you just set up a monthly invoicing system that just bills the client each month.
I don't know its meaning full or not as it is a very old post.
Instead of creating recurring profile on PayPal Server, You can store the customer's credit card on the PayPal using REST API: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api/#vault then every month you can fetch it and charge it like recurring Payment Or When client is no longer with the services then just remove its card from PayPal.
I suppose Authorize.net SIM method also does the same.
Hope this make sense.