What is the difference between PayPal's "Processed" and "Completed" PAYMENTSTATUS? - paypal

I'm coding a PayPal Express Checkout setup for a client, and see both "Processed" and "Completed" in PayPal's list of possible PAYMENTSTATUS response codes. The PayPal DoExpressCheckoutPayment API Doc describes them this way:
Completed – The payment has been completed, and the funds have been added successfully to your account balance.
Processed – A payment has been accepted.
I'm wondering whether I should treat "Processed" in the same way I would treat a Completed payment, or instead if it should be handled like a Pending payment. (EG: Will it eventually change to either Completed or something else?)
Thanks in advance for any help!

The status "Processed" is used for MassPayments. When Masspayments are successful you will get a IPN post with a payment_status of Processed.

I'm having the same doubts, but after researching I found no clear information from Pay Pal side that explains it better the difference.
What I did is treat the Processed status as a pending status imagining that at some point should evolve to Complete.
I take it this way because what Pay Pal leaves clear is that you shouldn't ship until the payment is Complete.

Related

Handling Paypal payment status 'Completed-Funds-Held' with time-sensitive goods

Good morning, I'm working with DoExpressCheckout's Payment Status response for an InstantPaymentOnly Sale.
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/merchant/DoExpressCheckoutPayment_API_Operation_NVP/
By PAYMENTINFO_n_PAYMENTSTATUS all possible responses are shown, Completed-Funds-Held is the latest addition.
I'm providing a service that expires and must be used by a certain time. If the payments final status is not known by the time the service must start, its looks like we're going to have to collect payment (again) in person and refund the online payment. Needless to say, that doesn't sound good.
Q. Could Completed-Funds-Held result in funds never being deposited to the main balance?
The documentation for that particular status lists two possible response codes that go along with Completed-Funds-Held: newsellerpaymenthold (not applicable in my case) and paymenthold which vaguely states "A hold is placed on the merchant's transaction for a reason not listed."
Basically is Completed-Funds-Held a "successful" transaction where the purchaser can receive his product without risk of the seller never receiving payment?
EDIT: Is Completed-Funds-Held a final status if the payment is successful? Or will a Completed IPN request come if and when the hold is settled?
Those payments will eventually become available. What you should do is setup an IPN solution so that you can automatically update your system when a payment hold is released. The same would be true for things like e-checks where the payment status is simply pending and then clears a few days later.

Does Paypal send an IPN if completed?

what if someone pays in Germany with ELV (charge) and the payment is pending.
Does PayPal send an IPN for pending or only for completed?
What types of IPN messages are there?
Hope you can help me!
Cheers
have a look at this link under 'Payment_status' (Ctrl-F to find it helps).
IPN integration guide/IPNvariables
To be honest not sure what a German ELV is but I believe an IPN is sent when the payment status is any of the listed payment_status (or atleast I have seen 'Pending', Completed, 'Refunded', 'Processed', 'Reversed' IPN's) so I can say you should get an IPN sent when it's 'Pending' as you ask about. You have turned on IPN sending to a handler file on your server, etc.? If so you should be able to store logfiles and read them and look for a line like:
payment_status : Completed
hope thats helped.
T

IPN payment_status variable

I am using PayPal's IPN service to confirm payment. My listener is checking the payment_status variable hoping to find "Completed". I don't want to do anything in my database unless the payment comes back "Completed". My question is, what if it does not come back with that status? Will PayPal continue to communicate with my listener until it is complete? For example, the status could come back as "Processed", which appears to be a step before "Completed". Below is a link to a document with all of the variables:
https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/en_US/developer/docs/pdf/ipnguide.pdf
On page 10:
Because IPN messages can be sent at various stages in a transaction’s progress, make sure
that the transaction’s payment status is “completed” before enabling shipment of
merchandise or allowing the download of digital media.
So yes, I think PayPal will always give you an IPN with Completed status.

Does paypal resend IPN once a payment status has been changed from pending to complete/failed?

I have done some scouring but cannot find a definitive answer for this!
I get "VERIFIED" and "Pending" so i can put my orders from "placed" to "in-progress" but need the complete / failed so i can then transfer to "paid" and "cancelled".
Anyone have anything definitive on this, or is it a waiting game until test payments are complete (not using sandbox).
If the payment has a “Pending” status, you receive another IPN when the payment clears, fails, or is denied.
Also, here are some good things to check once you receive Payment_staus=completed
Check that the "txn_id" is not a duplicate to prevent a fraudster
from using reusing an old, completed transaction
Validate that the "receiver_email" is an email address registered in
your PayPal account, to prevent the payment from being sent to a
fraudster's account
Check other transaction details such as the item number and price to
confirm that the price has not been changed
You get another IPN (not a 'resend'), same txn_id, with payment_status='Completed'.

PayPal express checkout handling "pending payments" with IPN

I cant find anny clear documentations about this.
If you use paypal express checkout, when a payment is pending what happens next?
Does paypal sends you by IPN an update if the states changes, do you have options?
Let say you do an DoExpressCheckoutPayment (with NVP)
and you get this:
&PAYMENTSTATUS=Pending
&PENDINGREASON= ECHECK //The payment is pending because it was made by an eCheck that has not yet cleared.
&REASONCODE=None
So you've made the payment and you want to wait until its cleared? What should you do next.
Update Some (external documentation) I found only sugest you could use (IPN?) to handle pending payments.
"If the Do Express Checkout Payment PENDINGREASON response is a value
other than none or completed , the payment is pending. Typically,
this means the customer has paid with aneCheck. In such a case, funds
are not guaranteed, and you should not ship or deliver items or
services until the payment has successfully completed. NOTE:
PayPal recommends that you block eChecks as a payment method if you
are unable tohandle pending state payments.To find out the status of a
pending payment, you can:
Submit an Inquiry transaction.
Check the status using PayPal Manager. See PayPal Manager online help
for details."
The paypal sandbox seems to have the option to check IPN messages for the express checkout type. The only correlation (if its ment to be used this way) between the DoExpressCheckoutPayment and the IPN seems you can use the "custom" field to keep track of a pending status. The txn_id (ipn) isn't given in DoExpressCheckoutPayment (nvp). Does any one have any experience with this?
The transaction ID is most certainly given in DoExpressCheckoutPayment, even if the PAYMENTSTATUS=Pending. A pending payment is still a transaction.
So yes, you would be notified via IPN when the transaction is completed. This typically takes a few working days.
Once it has completed, you can correlate the transaction from DoExpressCheckoutPayment to the IPN you will have received via the txn_id in the IPN.
Note: If you want to test a 'Pending' payment in the PayPal Sandbox, simply go to https://developer.paypal.com/ > Test account and click on 'Payment review' for the seller account you're testing with.
Once payment review is enabled on that seller account, any transactions it receives will be in a 'Pending' state.
Simply disable payment review to release the tranasctions afterwards.
I thought i'd add my two pence worth of thoughts to this.
I was getting a pending return status using Express Checkout via the dotNet SDK, according to the doc's and examples I should have been getting an 'approved' status.
I couldn't figure out why but it turned out to be because I was passing through a new currency, in our case 'GBP'. I had to log in as the facilitator sandbox account and decide what to do with the new currency.. convert it or setup a new balance in the currency. Once I did this, and set it as the default action, the pending return status no longer occurred.
hope that helps someone!
One thing not noted here and I haven't found anything else to confirm.. is that Paypal Express API doesn't support passing in the NOTIFYURL with the code. So you have to use the hardcoded IPN url set in your paypal account. This of course causes issues because you need a common callback file that can redirect to the individual payment options.
For example, if you are using Paypal Express AND Paypal Advanced.. Neither of those properly support a notifyurl passed in using the code. Paypal Advanced claims to, but it doesn't seem to work. So there needs to be a common IPN callback file that handles the redirection to each.
Unless someone else can confirm a working notify url for Express Checkout variable that can be passed in the code?