I'm new to PayPal and overwhelmed by all the possible approaches for integrating with PayPal.
As a start I want to implement one single subscription with monthly recurring payment. When the user returns to the site after fulfilling the payment, he/she will instantly be upgraded to "premium" member (digital product only - no shipping involved).
The first alternative I've looked into is the Express Checkout API, which looks ok, but is there any simpler way to do it?
Can I for example create a standard button (JS button or the form based), but still be able to verify the payment details when the user returns, using either the REST API, IPN or something else?
Any hints on best practices are appreciated.
Yes, there are entirely too many ways to solve this problem by now.
You can probably satisfy your requirements via buttons (aka Standard), Express Checkout (aka Pro) style APIs, or RESTful APIs, but there are a few gotchas to know:
First, PayPal has several products to do recurring payments; these products have functional differences and are tied to different integration styles. So (for example) PayPal's product called "subscriptions" (tied to Website Standard aka buttons) has different (and generally less flexible) capabilities than "recurring payments" (tied to Express Checkout) which in turn differs from "billing agreements" (tied to REST APIs, although the term "billing agreements" is also used in the express checkout recurring payments product). Oh, and there's another similar product tied to the Adaptive Payments suite of APIs.
Confused yet? Sorry. But it is important to determine whether the specific product you want to use will satisfy your requirements first before you do any integration, or you might end up redoing that integration work later (and potentially have to migrate customers, if you have already opened your business) in order to get access to specific features of another product later on. E.g., the subscriptions product has very limited ability for sellers to modify the subscriptions after they are set up. If that is OK, then great, use it -- it's simple to integrate. If I can oversimplify a bit: the Standard subscriptions product is the oldest and most limited; the Pro recurring payments is more flexible and mature; the REST billing agreement product is the newest, very flexible, but not yet as widely used; it may lack a feature you need today, but is the most likely to be continually improved going forward. I would not personally recommend the Adaptive product, although it also has its benefits.
Now, to your integration question: fortunately all these PayPal products can use IPNs. Unfortunately, IPNs are not instant. They generally arrive quickly (1-2 seconds) but delays can happen and it is quite awkward to be unable to process the customer. I would use IPNs only when shipping physical goods, not for immediate access to digital goods or in other cases where customers are waiting for a page from you. Fortunately, each of the other methods has a way to instantly determine the success of a PayPal action without waiting for an IPN:
Website Standard Payments will include GET or POST variables when it posts the user back to your site that will tell you about the outcome. If you use the Payment Data Transfer feature, these variables will include signature information so that you can post them back to PayPal & PayPal will verify their validity (so that a would-be thief could not fool you by engineering a post that looks like a PayPal success redirect).
The two API-based methods are even easier: the APIs themselves return all the information you need in the API response. So wherever in your code you make the call to create the subscription/agreement, if you get back a success then do your work to make your user premium.
There is the odd case of a user successfully paying and then getting "lost", as it were, e.g. the redirect failing/browser closing before they return to your site, or your site choking while trying to turn on the user. For this reason many people advise using IPNs, which PayPal will attempt to redeliver until you verify them back to PayPal. Not a bad idea, depending.
And of course you can call search & get details type APIs to get information about your transactions & agreements at PayPal -- although again, you will need to integrate with the right API that matches the product you are integrated with (e.g. Standard-based subscriptions won't show up if you ask the REST interface for billing agreements).
Hope this helps.
Related
In Paypal, I m trying to implemen t a Auto payment system using paypal. Where user can save their card details then whenever the invoice is generated using card details invoice can be paid automatically.
I read the document of paypal but not found regarding that.
Please let me know how can I implement Auto payment system using PayPal.
There's quite a bit of information on the Subscriptions page, but most of that is a generic overview. However, there is link to the Integrate Subscriptions page that gives more links to specific API and SDK instructions.
Follow through the step-by-step information to get all this set up. It'll take a while to get everything correct, so definitely use their testing APIs so you aren't doing a bunch of tests on their production APIs and spending your own money doing it.
Once you get the subscriptions created and someone subscribed, PayPal does the rest. You just need to create the subscription and allow people to subscribe.
Also, PayPal keeps track of credit cards and other payment forms for you, so you don't have to go through all the PCI security procedures for storing that information yourself. That gets real involved and can cause you to get in serious trouble with fines and lawsuits if you aren't certified. It's much easier to use a payment processing gateway such as PayPal for this than create your own, especially since you are going to be using PayPal for processing the payments anyway.
I'm in the process of developing a feature to accept payments in my website, and I already did it using a paypal button and IPN (a PHP listener to process data to a DB once the payment is completed, this one actually https://github.com/paypal/ipn-code-samples/blob/master/paypal_ipn.php, properly customized).
I never touched PayPal API and I wonder if I am missing something... I'm kind of new to this kind of development and I want to be sure I'm doing it right and not missing any obvious thing which might compromise the security of the payment or whatever... I already tested things in Sandbox and everything works as expected, but I am concerned about the API and I see many people using it...
So, am I missing anything?
Thanks!
What you've done is accurate and will work just fine so long as it's suiting your needs.
One potential security risk would be if you are not using a hosted button. Did you choose to "Save this button at PayPal" when you created the button? If so, you should see a hosted_button_id included in the HTML for the button. In this case it's protected.
If the button code includes individual parameters for things like item_name, amount, etc. then that code could be adjusted by people in their browser and then the button could be submitted with different pricing, for example.
You could check for this sort of thing in your IPN script and setup an automatic refund if the price doesn't match your database, but I generally try to avoid that sort of thing.
I prefer using the Express Checkout API instead. If you were comfortable getting IPN working with PHP then you should be plenty comfortable using this PayPal PHP SDK to integrate Express Checkout.
The three calls you'll need to work with are SetExpressCheckout, GetExpressCheckoutDetails, and DoExpressCheckoutPayment.
This documentation will cover the general steps and where those calls come into play, and that library will make each of those calls very simple for you.
Express Checkout will eliminate any potential adjustments users could make to code (because they won't be able get to the code at all unlike HTML) and it also has more advanced features and options that PayPal Standard does not have. Most importantly, the ability to force the "guest checkout" experience so that non-PayPal account holders can easily checkout using a credit card without any confusion.
They can do it with PayPal Standard, too, but depending on cookies set in their browser it may make the guest checkout option tough to find. Express Checkout makes it very prominent at all times, and generally results in increased checkout conversion rates.
I am working with paypal first time.
I have a product and I want to integrate paypal with it.
I want to achieve the following tasks :
Client comes to my website and select a plan,which is a monthly recurring plan.
Then client is redirected to Paypal for payment.
Client makes payment.
Return backs to home page.
I have gone through the documentation of paypal and I have the following questions.
What should I use REST API or Classic Sdk, as I want to create Recurring Profile,Work with EXPRESS-CHECKOUT and REFERENCE TRANSACTIONS.
I have customers all over globe and it is stated in the documentation that, for the customers in Germany and China , I have to use REFERENCE TRANSACTION.
Some where in the documentation of Merchant SDK it is stated that the classic API's will be deprecated, so is it a good approach to use Classic SDK
I also wanted to track the transactions(payment) made by user, so that I can show him the amount that is deducted in each month in his profile details.
Please suggest a feasible solution to my problem.
Thanks in advance.
Here's what I use. I went to Web Payments Standard and created a Subscription button. (I like the unencrypted variety, but you can encrypt if you want.) In there, you set the terms of the subscription, as well as where to post the IPN message. When the IPN message comes back, you deal with it. You'll get a subscr_signup at the start along with a subscr_payment. Then, on renewals, you'll get a subscr_payment again. What I like to do is store every verified IPN message in the database for my customer.
For handling the management of those subscriptions for things like tracking info, refunds, subscription cancellations, and voids, you'll need to use NVP API, which is a very simple API. If you stored in a database every IPN message with all those fields, then you should be able to pass certain fields of those to the NVP API in order to get what you need done.
If you're worried about longevity of the APIs, then don't. All they do when they deprecate APIs is stop giving you good docs on them. They still let those older versions run. If they didn't, there would be major upheaval on the web with web commerce products breaking all over the place. However, that said, if you want to prepare for the future, then get on the Braintree Payments API because PayPal bought Braintree and that's the future of their API.
I have gone through the Paypal website, looked at their dozens of FAQS and documents, and still don't have a great idea as to how to integrate the Paypal Masspay API. I was hoping I'd have better luck on here :).
I have an app that gives users prizes, with an oracle SQL database that populates whenever a user redeems a prize.
Would I need to download the SDK onto my app, include the PayPal IPN, and call the MassPay API each time a user redeems a prize?
I have attempted to contact Paypal multiple times to no avail.
Not sure which aspect of your question is most problematic for you. I assume that you've looked at the concept diagram at
https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/mass-payments
where the Excel worksheet is roughly analogous to a table's (or query's) worth of payees.
You would normally provide scripting code on your server/website that would submit that payee/amount list through the MassPay API calls against the PayPal website. If you only have one or two payees at a time, this is not the usual way to make a payment to your users (one-offs are generally Adaptive Payments API). It's not a downloadable app, though.
So is your app something the users download and interact with your site? If so, the correct place to put the code that faces PayPal (and actually transfers money around) is on your site's server. Not on the handset.
I finally reached a capable support member of the PayPal Team. The answer I got:
No SDK needed. All I need to do is set up an API call from my server to their server each time I want to reference a payment.
I'm trying to integrate a payment mechanism to my site. The scenario that I need is not trivial and can be explained by the following example:
User pays upfront for a subscription program (i.e. receiving Netflix). User is able to make changes to the subscription (i.e. change number of movies checked out each time from 4 to 2)
User is able to buy additional one time purchases via the provider's site (Netflix) supplied by 3rd parties. These items (i.e. popcorn, snacks) get billed to the same credit card as the subscription without having to go through the process of resubmitting the credit card information.
Of course, my site takes also a small fee for the transactions :-)
I was wondering if this is supported by PayPal, Google Checkout or someone else.
Thanks.
The Paypal api can handle all of those processes.
I seem to have dropped the ball on what kind of answer you wanted so I'll leave it at that.
If you have some feedback, more direct questions I will try to answer as much as I can
--
The money would best go through you first, unless somehow you can convince your customers its normal to bill them per item. Also if they pay by credit card you should only bill them once as you would incur fees on every payment. I don't know of anyway to bill once but distribute the payments.
As for the paypal docs..
Very good resource, there is also some sample code for most major web languages
Also this will get you started if you don't have a developer login
Their developer support is also pretty good. One thing a lot of people seem to screw up when starting out with the paypal api is not setting the latest version in the configs so don't forget to update that to the latest release. :)
Disclaimer..
Yea I know there is a lot of bad press about paypal and crazy stuff happening, but they do get the job done most of the time, its not my fault the customers love to use it.