How can I get the next payment date from the IPN notification from Paypal. Is there a parameter there relevant? I found "next_payment_date" but it's not clear.
Right now, I'm just calculating it myself.
Calculating it yourself is good, because PayPal some times skips sending an IPN. It doesn't happen often, I've done tens of thousands of transactions and I've only seen this less than 5 times.
PayPal should send a subscr_eot when the subscription stops.
If you're on the standard payment, you'll never see next_payment_date
https://www.x.com/developers/paypal/forums/ipn/pdt/nextpaymentdate-will-not-show
Also, if you accept echeques (payments via bank account), the payment won't always happen on that date, some times a week or more afterwards.
Related
I'm using paypal adaptive payments to make transaction via paypal. Although few of transactions are taking more than 6 hours too receive IPN.
I've gone through forum posts and their documentation, I came through - https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/products/instant-payment-notification/
"Because IPN is not a real-time service, your checkout flow should not wait for the IPN message before it is allowed to complete. If the checkout flow is dependent on receiving an IPN message, processing can be delayed by system load or other reasons. You should configure your checkout flow to handle a possible delay."
The callback is taking more than 6 hours is way too much. any suggestions ?
I've built several custom carts. On average, I see the PayPal IPN come back within 2 minutes at the longest, and usually recurring payments take longer than single payments because they send two IPN messages, not just one, on the initial setup. I usually take the 'custom' property and put a unique identifier that I have permanently cookied. So, even though I may see an initial IPN come in on a recurring payment, I wait for the one that says that txn_type is subscr_payment and also that payment_status is Completed. You can't really trust a subscription payment as being paid unless you see that second message. And if it's a single payment, then I look for txn_type to be web_accept and payment_status to Completed.
The way I handle things is to redirect the customer to PayPal to purchase using the form button technique. The customer pays and then gets redirected (thanks to the form hidden vars I created initially) back to my own custom cart URL that I specify. I call that URL the payment-confirmation script. I display a message with a progress bar to please wait while their payment is being confirmed with PayPal. I hold them there 10 seconds and then redirect to the receipt. It is on the receipt where I check the database to see if my IPN script has already processed this order. If not, then I redirect them back to the payment-confirmation script again for another 10 second progress bar delay. My receipt uses a session cookie to ensure I never send them into a loop more than one time to the payment-confirmation script. So, the customer waits another 10 seconds and then comes back to the receipt page, where I test again, reading my permanent cookie on the 'custom' property that I saved, versus the 'custom' property that comes in from the IPN that I use as the order key in the database. Usually within the first or second 10 second delay, the IPN has come in and I can proceed. However, if the IPN has still not come in, then I redirect to a friendly error message saying that their payment cannot be confirmed and to call our call center to remedy the issue. Our call center techs then see the delay problem in PayPal, back the other transaction out, and sell to the customer over the phone manually, instead.
I have a web site thats been operating for months, if not years. It takes payments via PayPal. IPNs are used to track the payment status against an order.
If the paypal account owner issues a refund, the IPN from that is tracked, and the order updated with the amount refunded.
Now: The problem: This was all working in February 2015. But since then I have made 4 refunds (buy logging into the PayPal website and refunding). Each one was days apart. In each case they were partial refunds.
In all cases the monies have reached the recipient, and logged transactions IDs etc in PayPal.
The first one, I never received the IPN.
The second one I did received the IPN (and decided the first one must have been a glitch, unusal though it would seem)
However the third and fourth also have not generated an IPN that I received.
From looking at the Apache logs, there appears to not have been even an attempt from notify.paypal.com that Apache received.
So I am much puzzled, have googled around but not found anything. Can anyone suggest what I have missed that have caused these IPNs to stop?
Perhaps I should add that I continue to receive all the payment notification IPNs just fine. It seems to be just the refunds that I miss.
I thought at one time there was a flag about IPNs in settings, but I can't see it anywhere in the new web interface.
Regards
Monathan
I've been running a 'Buy Now' button on my website for several months now, and a couple weeks back I observed a purchase that had went through where no IPN was sent to my website from PayPal. Later purchases that day succeeded.
Observations
PayPal had sent me an email notification that the purchase was successful, it also recorded this transaction in my account's payment log. This is normal.
The IPN History had no record of any IPN entries for that transaction; there is no record of PayPal attempting to contact my website to notify it of the IPN. This is not normal.
I have not modified the 'Buy Now' whatsoever in the past six months, and there is only one 'Buy Now' button connected to PayPal. Furthermore, this was the only payment that day that had failed to show up in the IPN History.
I've read (I forget the article) that this isn't all that uncommon (happens a few times a year for popular sellers). I don't know, however, what the solution is. I contacted PayPal support a week ago, and they have not gotten back to me.
I find that if the purchaser uses Credit Card option to pay, and they go through the payment page, the very last page has another button. Some purchasers don't click that very last button. The result is that the payment happens, but the IPN to your notify_url does not trigger.
This problem does not happen if the purchaser uses their paypal account to purchase.
I am looking for a solution to this.
Sometimes IPN can be delayed for various reasons, but it will usually post at some point.
I know just last week (or maybe the week before) the IPN servers were down so there were literally millions of IPN's that were qued up in the system and took a long time for them to get all caught up.
Usually, though, IPN works great and is pretty much real-time.
I have Google for almost 10 hours and it seems a bit unclear.
When I create a "Subscribe" button with my own "notify_url" will PayPal send an IPN to that URL when each recurring payment is made?
Paypal will use the same notify_url that you pass for every recurring payment on that same subscription. An example, may help.
If you pass a notify_url that contains the order id, like:
http://www.mydomain.com/paypal_ipn/{$order_id}
Then when somebody buys a subscription, Order #1, with a recurring payment for $1/day for a month, you will receive IPN data at "http://www.mydomain.com/paypal_ipn/1" for the initial 'txn_type=subscr_signup' and a 'txn_type=subscr_payment' every day until one of the following things occurs:
the user cancels the subscription, at which time you will get a 'txn_type=subscr_canceled'
their credit card expires 'txn_type=subscr_failed'
a month later when the subscription expires 'txn_type=subscr_eot'
On the next order, Order #2, all the IPN calls for that subscription will go to "http://www.mydomain.com/payapl_ipn/2"
Paypal won't store the notify_URL, you need to pass it everytime you send a transaction to paypal for processing. Notify_URL is one of the attributes of the hash; so when paypal receives your transaction hash, it will pick up whatever values you set for each of the attribute and act accordingly. Your understanding is correct!
Just noting that i am also seeing a possibly related problem for echecks where the later clearing ipn is not using the dynamic url that was specified in the originating transaction. First ipn advising pending payment goes to dynamic url
Second ipn advising cleared echeck goes to stored notification url not the dynamic url.
all other instant ipn's are fine and the 2nd ipn is received - but at the wrongurl - can see it in the logs.
any ideas appreciated - pending response from paypal.
I am adding subscriptions to a site using Paypal IPN which works very well, I can successfully create a new subscription and verify it. The subscription has a two week free trial. The guide was unfortunately a little vague on subscription statuses.
At the moment, the users account gets subscribed status once subscr_signup or subscr_payment is received and gets removed when either subscr_cancel or subscr_failed is received. I believe this is correct but it's best to make sure.
Also what is subscr_eot? the IPN guide describes it as "subscription’s end-of-term." Does this get triggered after the trial period is over?
subscr_eot is sent when a user's last paid interval has expired. subscr_cancel is sent as soon as the use cancels the subscription - for example:
User signs up on day 1 for a subscription which is billed once a month.
subscr_signup is sent immediately, subscr_payment is sent as soon as payment goes through (usually immediately as well).
On day 13, the user cancels. subscr_cancel is immediately sent, although the user has technically paid through to day 30. Cancelling at this point is up to you.
On day 30, subscr_eot is sent - the user has cancelled, and this is the day which his last payment paid until.
Not much changes with trial subscriptions - if a user cancels before a trial subscription is up, subscr_cancel is sent immediately, and subscr_eot is sent at the end of the trial.
Also, one interesting detail is how subscr_eot works with subscr_failed.
It looks like subscr_eot comes after the FINAL subscr_failed. So if in your account you set it to automatically retry failed payments 3 times, then it should go like this:
first failed payment => subscr_failed
second failed payment => subscr_failed
third failed payment => subscr_failed and subscr_eot
so basically in your code you can set subscr_failed to trigger an email like
hi user,
please take moment to check
your payment info, you may need to
update the credit card expiration
date, etc. You still have access,
we'll try again in a few days.
And setup subscr_eot to actually turn their subscription off and trigger an email like
Sorry, we still havent' gotten payment
and have taken your profile down. You
can still reactivate it by logging in and updating your payment info
Basically this is the "nice" way of doing it so customers have a grace period, and their account isn't shut off unexpectedly just because of an expired credit card or something like that.
The thread posted by Chris has been updated recently.
Sometime in 2010, PayPal stopped using subscr_eot when a user cancelled their account. After a number of complaints, they reinstated this, but took 6 months to do so. All this means is that you can once again handle your subscription notifications as described by Peter in the accepted answer.
From a PayPal representative:
subscr_cancel means the profile is
canceled and there will not be future
payments. However, if the buyer has
already paid for the current billing
cycle as they are charged up-front,
then you can use the subscr_eot to
terminate the profile.
Still unsure what happens in the event of multiple failed payment attempts, however. PayPal documentation at the moment is terrible.
It depends on the account if it is new or not whether subscr_eot gets sent, which is kinda beyond me?
I haven't found the proper way to manage subscriptions yet. Calculating the dates on the server could go wrong very fast if there is a delay in payment.