Paypal Question

[MikeAmin]

Hi, I was hoping someone here might be able to help/ point me in the right direction.

I want to setup a site where merchants can join, integrate their paypal buttons into my site, and then whenever a customer buys from them, my site automatically is notified of the payment. At this point, I would then send the merchant's merchandise to the customer.

Is this possible?

Are there any existing solutions out there for this?

To reiterate, the key point I'm looking for is a system by which my site is automatically notified of a successful paypal payment, and I would like this to be possible while it being very easy for merchants to integrate their paypal into my site (essentially requiring that they paste a script into a field, and voila, etc).

I have little no coding experience, so if you have any advice, if you could please use non-technical language I would greatly appreciate.

Any other general advice you could give me would be most welcome as well.

[chazzy]

just to understand, is your organization then representing a fulfillment entity for sellers? if so your aproach seems a bit odd. sellers should be notifying you, and grabbing the paypal tx is insecure

[wh666-666]

You're best off, each merchant having their own paypal account and payment process on your website.

If the merchant sells through many different channels, you can attach a link referral or a coupon code so the merchant knows the transaction has been referred by you and negotiate a percentage with the merchant for the service you offer.

[MikeAmin]

Chazzy,

Yes. My site would hold a product on behalf of the sellers. Having the seller need to notify me seems like an extra step. Having automatic notification of payment ensures the buyer gets the product upon seller receiving the payment.

Another option I was thinking of is that I receive the payments myself from the buyer, at which point I transfer the product, and then payout the buyer at the end of the month via check/bank-transfer, but this is less than ideal. I would rather the seller directly pay the buyer.

wh666,

That's what I hope to do. The important part thing for me is getting proof of payment.

Paypal has Instant Pay Notification (IPC):

https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_ipn.html

Instant Payment Notification (IPN) allows you to automate certain aspects of your business by posting transaction details to your server whenever you receive a PayPal payment or whenever a status change occurs on a transaction.

Paypal lets you choose at which URL you receive the IPN:

Enter the URL at which you would like to receive IPN posts.

So I'm thinking maybe I could have it so that the paypal process pages of the merchant are configured to send the IPNs to my server.

[felgall]

It should work provided that none of the sellers is already using an IPN script for anything else.. You'd just need to have an IPN script that captures all the buyer and seller info you need and have the sellers enter that address for the IPN script.

[MikeAmin]

I've been doing some digging. One account can have different IPNs:

https://www.paypal.com/en_US/pdf/PP_OrderManagement_IntegrationGuide.pdf

Activating IPN by Including the Notification URL in Programming Code You can activate IPN for specific payments by including a notification URL in the
programming code that your website sends to PayPal when people pay you. PayPal sends only IPNs related to payments that result from the code. PayPal sends them to the URL that you specified in the code. For example, if you accept payments from different websites through one PayPal account, you could include different notification URLs in your programming code to let each website receive IPNs only for its own payments.

So my merchants can have a unique IPN that's used just for my site. The problem I've found is that only business or premium paypal accounts can generate a signature/certificate that allows for IPN requests.

Given that I want to make it very easy for people to become merchants at my site, I don't think I want to make having a business/premium paypal account a requirement, as most people with paypal accounts have regular account.

I think I'll take chazzy's suggestion and have the seller notify me. That way I don't need to limit the payment channel through just paypal either. It won't be as efficient as the automatic system, but it'll give more payment options, and give me less headaches for integration.

Does any one know what happens if the seller claims he never received a payment, and buyer says he made the payment? Is there a way for my site to be able to authenticate whether a payment has been made?

[felgall]

Aa regular account can receive money from other Paypal accounts but not if Paypal need to take it from a bank account or credit card - it has to be a balance in the account itself - and the first payment that does come from a bank or credit card you need to upgrade to business or premium before you can receive it. So regular accounts don't need access to IPN because they can't really do any selling without having to upgrade their account anyway.

[MikeAmin]

Thanks for letting me know. Does that mean that if someone has a paypal premium or business account, they will be able to accept virtually every thing, i.e. account balance, bank account transfer, and credit cards, etc.? Or do does the seller still have to have a paypal account, even if the funds are coming from credit card, bank account transfer, etc?

[MikeAmin]

*Edit.

this

"Or does the seller still have to have a paypal account"

should be

"Or does the BUYER still have to have a paypal account"

I did some more digging, it looks like having a premier/business account lets you accept credit cards from buyers who don't have paypal accounts:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-standard-overview-outside

Get paid by anyone . even by customers without a PayPal account

I think this makes my decision a lot simpler. I think I will have my site require all merchants to have a paypal premier/business account, and have the IPN sent to my server's URL.

[felgall]

Whether buyers need a Paypal account or not depends on which country they are in. This list of countries that Paypal can accept payments from where the buyer doesn't have Paypal is still limited.

[MikeAmin]

As long as it allows it for the major countries, especially the US.

[felgall]

It is allowed in the US. I am not sure if there are any other countries where it is yet though.