Linking to Paypal Checkout.

Home made webshop to Paypal

[Bernard Marx]

I have nearly finished my very first webshop / shopping cart (ASP Classic).The boss wants an option for the buyer to pay via the company's newly created Paypal business account.

Having read through the material, I remain rather confused.

I would be grateful to hear from anyone who has either successfully gone through this process, or is currently trying to integrate their own shopping cart with Paypal.

- Is there are sandbox for testing?

- The literature specifically states that buyers do not need to have a Paypal account to pay via credit card, but the instructions for integration appear to assume that all buyers do have Paypal accounts.

I would be eternally grateful for any advice.

[pp_rb]

Yes, there is a Sandbox environment - sandbox (dot) paypal (dot) com. You have to create a Developer Central account to create accounts on the Sandbox.

Setting up a basic PayPal payment button is pretty simple: just put the email address for your company's PayPal account in the "business" variable in this sample and you can test it out:

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_xclick">
<input type="hidden" name="business" value=YOUR_EMAIL_HERE>
<input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="test">
<input type="hidden" name="amount" value="1.00">
<input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="2">
<input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">
<input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but23.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!">
</form>

You can try this in a couple of different browsers and you should be able to see what pages a non-PayPal customer would use for making credit card payments without an account.

[Bernard Marx]

Thanks very much for your help, pp_rb. I'll try to test out as much as I can.

I'll let you know how I get on.

[Bernard Marx]

The code above seems to work quite well for the "live" account. However, even after exhaustive attempts, I still can't get the sandbox account profile to show the option for "Account Optional" (credit card payment) in the Payment Receiving Preferences page. The page is also missing a number of other options that are present on the page for the live account.

I may be forced to test using the live account, which doesn't make me feel happy.

[Bernard Marx]

The above problem is now sorted .The option is in

Profile > Website Payment Preferences

Now trying to

1) Stop the buyer from needing to give a telephone number
- Option: off, but requirement still in effect

2) Get Auto Return to work.

[pp_rb]

We always ask for a phone number in the Account Optional checkout, but that phone number is not shared with the merchant. If the merchant has set the option to request or require a Contact Phone Number, the customer will be asked for this information on the final Review page and will have the option of using the phone number previously entered with the Billing information, or entering a separate phone number to share with the merchant.

Auto-Return does not work with Account Optional - the customer will not be automatically returned. However, there should be a "Return to Merchant" option on the pages after the payment is complete.

[ecomconsultant]

FYI: When running a test transaction for PayPal pro, you can not use the VISA card 411111111111, it hangs the sandbox. I had to learn this the hard way.