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Anybody know whether PayPal Payments Advanced accepts info collected onsite?

by carlos123
2 replies
Hi everyone,

I have been racking my brain and have contact PayPal a number of times trying to get an answer from them and as I have experienced in the past...their customer support is pretty bad.

So I am hoping someone here can give me some insight since there are bound to be some of you that have dealt with collecting payments through PayPal's API and advanced payment solutions.

I am creating a custom shopping cart for a client of mine. To replace one he presently pays a monthly fee to have.

He uses PayPal to collect payments through his present shopping cart.

The shopping cart he now has redirects out to PayPal when it comes time to confirm payment. All non-credit related info is collected at his site (or actually by the shopping cart software hosted cart and checkout pages) and passed to PayPal presumably through back end API calls through the shopping cart when the shopper is REDIRECTED to the PayPal site.

All well and good.

What we are trying to do is create a new shopping cart solution that accepts PayPal payments (both from a PayPal account or a credit card - which payment would still be collected by PayPal) as if the info entered by a prospective shopper was done at the site.

In other words it will appear as through all info collected through the shopping cart process will be at the site WITHOUT A REDIRECTION to PayPal though in truth it will still be PayPal collecting the money.

Anyway...that's by way of background.

I am presently trying to work with PayPal Payments Advanced to do just this but the stickling point is uncertainty about whether PPA will accept information collected by us onsite or whether it requires that PayPal collect all info including name, shipping/billing address and credit card info. Their PayPal Manager screens imply that PayPal wants to collect it all.

In other words we want to collect info like name, shipping/billing address, etc. in our own way onsite and to pass that info to PayPal who in turn will collect the credit card info (such as card number, etc) to complete the transaction.

But is that possible with PPA?

I've gotten conflicting answers from PayPal or no answer at all and am still trying to figure out what is and is not possible in this regard when using PPA.

I know that what we want to do is possible through PayPal Payments Pro but that's $30 a month vs $5 for PPA.

I've talked to my client about using Stripe to collect credit card payments and PayPal to collect from customers who want to pay through a PayPal account but I don't know if that is allowed by PayPal Express so if possible, in case it isn't, we'd like to stick to an all PayPal solution.

Anybody got any experience with PPA who might care to throw some enlightment on this my way?

It would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Carlos

PS. I've read everything I can get my hands on regarding PPA and nothing I have read so far addresses this.
#accepts #advanced #collected #info #onsite #payments #paypal
  • Profile picture of the author juangarciamtl
    Hi there
    what i would do is to create a form in html where you ask for all the information of the user.
    Then you submit that form to a php file that will grab the information and save it into a database, rigth after the information is saved, you can use javascript to send the important information to paypal and the total amount of the invoice that was created in your shopping cart. It takes some time but you get to have all the infomation of the user and you only use paypal to get the payments. also they have a notification system
    you can use that to confirm the payment for the invoice if the paypal email they use when filling the information matches the paypal email they use to pay.

    hope this helps a little bit or at least it guides you to the right direction.
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    • Profile picture of the author carlos123
      Thanks for the input juangarciamtl (quite the name you got there ).

      I figured it out but only after spending a HUGE amount of additional time reading through mountains of PayPal documentation and then being put in contact with what PayPal calls some sort of integration engineer.

      The engineer has been of tremendous help but even with their help it's still a bear to implement PayPal Payments Advanced.

      The problem is that PayPal has become this huge behomoth with products being retired (but still usable) but where the names are very similar to current product offerings. For example PayPal Payments Pro and PayPal Payments Pro Payflow edition (huh?). They have all kinds of names.

      PayPal Payment Pro, Paypal Payment Pro Payflow edition, Payflow Pro, PayPal Payments Advanced, Express Checkout, Payflow Gateway, Payflow Link, PayPal Standard, Website Payments Pro, and a slew of others. Some are retired, some are not.

      To try to figure out what is what and how to use them is a royal pain. Big time.

      To top it off their documentation is not corrected to keep up with current practices so for example...their documentation talks of needing to create sandbox test accounts when in fact current sandbox account creation automatically creates two accounts for use in testing API calls already. Their docs tell you to use sandbox test account API credentials when in fact the current credentials that must be used are the credentials to get into what is known as the PayPal Manager.

      PayPal tells you to set the Business test account inside the sandox to Pro but you are left hanging wondering if that means you are now upgrading your PayPal account to the $30 a month PayPal Payments Pro.

      Until you find out (through whatever means) that the PayPal Payments Pro product is now retired and that your concern is...well...unwarranted!

      Sigh.

      One thing after another is like this. There is what the PayPal docs say and then there is what is true in practice and the two are not always the same.

      Oh...and trying to figure things out by Googling for answers is problematic in that many pages that show up spout out what amounts to inaccurate or outdated information.

      Information that may send you down attempts to get things working that lead to nothing workable.

      Before I got hold of their engineer I was dealing with a support department where they honestly did not even seem to be able to understand English. Half my support emails went unanswered. The other half (except for one) were answered in ways that completely missed what I was asking about such that their responses were irrelevant.

      When I called...I think I was connected to a support center in the Philippines from the heavy accent of the rep I was speaking with and their help was completely and totally useless to me.

      I am amazed that a company like PayPal ever got this big to tell you the truth.

      Carlos
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