I'm really struggling with trying to figure out how to make PayPal do what I want, which is frustrating because it's so simple!
What I need is pretty much just a field to enter an amount, then a checkout process that will process the payment, allowing the user to pay without creating a PayPal account if so desired. That's it, nothing fancy.
I can create a Buy Now button with the Price field left empty. This allows the user to enter an amount, but the resulting interface on PayPal's site is butt-ugly and confusing. Worse, it doesn't allow for non-PayPal payments... the only options are "Pay with my PayPal account" and "Create a PayPal account."
The Donation button does exactly what I want, but I can't use it because it looks like I may be taking in more than the yearly limit on donations, and I'm not actually a non-profit.
Is there a way to get this to work the way I want on PayPal, or do I need to write code to integrate with my site? If the latter, is there a simple, straightforward guide to how this sort of thing is done for someone with no experience at all with regard to setting up secure sites? PayPal's guides all seem to leave a lot unsaid, assuming I'm already an expert at this level of site design.
Thanks in advance!
There is usually (in smaller print) an option on the PayPal landing page to pay by credit card without a PayPal account. Is a dropdown with multiple price amounts a viable option?
It turned out that the issue was on PayPal's end. The "account optional" setting that was supposed to be present was not. I talked to PayPal support, and they were eventually able to fix the problem.
Related
I implemented Paypal-Checkout which works fine so far. My problem is that I don't know which type of payment was used: Was it a "pay now"-option or a "pay later"-option?
I know that for me as a dealer it doesn't matter, but the customers are confused, because what should I write on the invoice? When writing "Thanks for your payment via Paypal", people thinks that everything is done and they needn't to do anything more (which is not true for "pay-later"-schemes). When writing "Please follow the instructions given by Paypal to pay our invoice", people which already payed get confused.
So is there really no good choice here? What do you recommend? Is there any way to get to know what the user selected?
I implemented Paypal-Checkout with php.
PayPal keeps funding source information private by design. You will not know whether the payer used a balance in their account, a credit card, a bank account, PayPal Credit, Pay Later (Pay in 4/Pay in 3), Venmo in the US, or any one of the other local payment methods that might be presented (depending on the buyer's location)
All you will know is that you received a completed PayPal payment, and the email address of the sender. So the best thing to display in your system as the funding source is indeed something like:
"Paid with: PayPal (logo image) emailofpayer#domain.com"
That is what all normal ecommerce sites do.
With a current PayPal Checkout integration, it is technically possible to log which button on your site was clicked before proceeding with the checkout. However, the button clicked within your site may not correspond to what was ultimately payed with in the later completed transaction (it may fall back to a different method if the first declined, for example, or the user may change their mind about using Pay Later and pay with PayPal instead, or whatever). So this is not what you are asking for.
I'm trying to find an answer of a general question.
I'm developing a webstore using Paypal (Express checkout) and Sagepay.
So, if in the report paypal confirms that the payment is actually done, e.g.:
PAYMENTINFO_0_ACK = Success
Do I need to worry if the user's card is valid, stolen, 3Dsecurity, etc., or PayPal takes care of all this?
Thanks
Essentially yes. Although I'm not exactly sure about that specific attribute you have given an example of.
If you send the item to the address given on the PayPal transaction and the transaction is not under review or pending, then you have what they call 'seller protection'.
This protects against hacked accounts or stolen card details etc.
It's a little difficult to find out on the PayPal website. https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/paypal-safety-and-security
Edit: If in doubt, contact PayPal. https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/helpcenter/helphub/home/
Although it is sometimes very difficult to get providers like this to admit liability, it's a little more black and white with PayPal.
I've done a LOT of research on how to accept payments through PayPal for items whose price changes dynamically.
My site sells a service and there are pretty much an infinite possible prices for the same item based on parameters (price increments in $0.99, 0.20 and 0.10).
I've looked into Paypal Express but it doesn't seem to allow accepting credit cards / debit cards, only payments through Paypal.
I looked into a "hacky" solution that calls the API's BMUpdateButton method to update the price of the button on PayPal's side but this won't work in my case as multiple users may be on the page at the same time and would need to be quoted different prices.
I saw that I can create a payment page from scratch and call APIs to create, accept, and verify payments against PayPal but that's a lot of coding for one and that tremendously reduces security as I don't have SSL and will need to get it which isn't cheap for a start-up business :)
I also came across creating a "non-hosted" button (haven't tried it yet) but that seems to require specifying my business email address in the HTML code which would be far less than ideal.
What I'd really like to do is have a php page act as a gatekeeper between the time the user checks out and what gets sent to PayPal where my PHP can inject the payment amount in and the user can confirm it on the PayPal page and checkout. Any other solution that satisfy the requirements will be truly appreciated.
Requirements again are
Must accept credit cards and PayPal payments
User does not have to have a Paypal account
Price must be dynamic and be able to support multiple users at the same time
Must be as secure as possible. I don't have SSL. An html input type='hidden' won't work as it's too easy to manipulate.
Another thing I thought of just now while typing this post up - if I can securely add quantities of an "item" that may also serve the purpose. For instance, I could add 10 quantities of "items" costing $0.99 and 2 "items" costing 0.10 to get to my required total of 10.19. Is it possible? The quantity boxes, again, must not be changeable by the user. It's more of an all or nothing type of deal :)
Help will be truly appreciated. Please let me know if I've missed anything.
Express Checkout does include "Guest Checkout" so people can pay using a credit card without having or creating a PayPal account. Unfortunately, they just recently made changes so you're forced to click a "Guest Checkout" button before you can see the full credit card form, so some buyers still miss it and don't realize they can do that.
Payments Pro would definitely give you want, but you would indeed need an SSL, and you'd need to make sure you're not saving any credit card details locally.
Payments Advanced is similar to Pro except that the form is hosted within an iframe and resides on PayPal's server so you don't need an SSL that way.
I personally prefer Payments Pro.
I'm really having trouble finding out how to set this up. Their documentation is horrendous at best. I called Paypal and told them what I need:
have my own custom shopping cart
client doesn't want to pay monthly fee
I was told that I could use Website Payments Standard to send my cart contents and the user can choose to sign in/pay or simply pay by CC without an account. Every link on their documentation sends me to the silly HTML button creator. I don't need hand-holding through the coding, I just need to know where I can find the proper documentation. I don't want Paypal buttons that send customers to a paypal cart page every time they add something.
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_html_cart_upload
This is what I was looking for. It only took 3+ hours to find, so congrats to you Paypal. You've stolen my money in the past, now you've stolen my time. Hopefully this helps someone else who was looking for the same thing.
Thanks! I'm looking for a way to implement paypal in my java (spring) server so my clients (or I) can easily setup their webshops. I totally agree that implementing PayPal in a web application should be simple and in reality is a total mess.
So thanks a lot for posting this here, I guess you also saved me some additional time!
Best wishes,
Jochen
Had a nice little custom button with a few parameters I was POSTing to PayPal (and getting POSTed back via IPN) a few years ago working fine. Payments were disabled for several years, but now my client wants to resume subscriptions with their new campaign.
I switched back to the sandbox hostname/merchant accounts, did a sandbox transaction with a test Visa card, and all was well.
Switched it to the live hostname/merchant account, went to do another test with a real Visa, but noticed that not only has the real PayPal site been completely rebranded/redesigned, they now seem to be forcing you to create a PayPal account: on the sandbox, there's a blurb with a link that says "continue" which takes you right to the credit card/billing information (this is identical to what the live PayPal site used to look like a few years ago).
NOTE: The merchant account has changed; I'm not sure if that matters or not and/or if there's any settings in there I need to change.
Question: is this the way it is now with PayPal? I can't seem to find any official information that says yes/no. Besides the Express, is there any other IPN method that'll work here or is this a policy thing at PayPal? I'd hate to rewrite my working/tested code, but this isn't going to fly with my client.
Yahel's answer is incorrect: I called PayPal, and they explained that the following conditions must be met in order to accept non-PayPal payments:
The business email address must be confirmed. You can check by going to Profile > Email.
PayPal Account Optional must be checked:
Go to www.paypal.com.au and log in to your Business account.
Click 'Profile icon' near the top right of the page (next to "Log out" button)
Click "Profile & settings"
Click ‘My selling tools.’
Click ‘Update' beside 'Website preferences.’
Select 'On' under 'PayPal Account Optional' near the bottom of the page.
Click 'Save.'
Yes paypal has been forcing users to create an account for a long time now. Before that you could use a credit card up to 10 times and then it would force you to create an account anyway.
The reason you are seeing the old branding in your sandbox is probably because it is you old sandbox on an old paypal server.
Last I tried there was no way around this new policy.
But djechelon is right, they have an excellent customer service, give them a call.
PayPal does force people to create accounts, even when they want to just make a single payment. I was puzzled by this situation too: I was choosing the option to pay without a PayPal account, but still was forced to provide all the private details enough for PayPal to create an account for me against my wishes. Very sneaky of PayPal! Then I found this page and that explained a lot.
This is the message I received in my PayPal Account:
PayPal Account Optional
When this feature is turned on, your customers will go through an optimized checkout experience. This feature is available for Buy Now, Donations, and Shopping Cart buttons, but not for Subscription buttons.
So you cannot provide a regular "Subscribe" experience to non-PayPal customers. I believe you must pay the $19.99 a month "Enhanced Subscription" for this.
PayPal Has a Purchasing Limit of $3,000 for "Guests".
I ran into this issue as well and #gravyface was bang on with setting your account preferences. However, my customers were still having issues paying without a PayPal account.
I called PayPal and it turns out they have a $3,000 (cumulative) purchasing limit for "guests". My customer's invoice was for $7,000 so even though my preferences were set to make the PayPal account optional, it still would not go through.
Hope that helps others.
JP