Paypal

With PayPal payment method, you can setup PayPlans to accept payments from PayPal.

Payment Features

Currently PayPal payment method supports the following payment features:

• One-time Payments (PayPal Account or Credit Cards). User will be redirected to PayPal to complete the transaction.

• Recurring Payments

• Trial & Recurring Payments

• Refunds must be done from the Merchant Account on PayPal

• Recurring subscriptions must be cancelled from the Merchant Account on PayPal

Setting up PayPal Payment Method

1. Head to Payment Method sections, click on "New" and search for PayPal , then click Select

2. You will be prompted with few details that required for you to fill them in. You can refer them below for more information.

   • Merchant Email — Fill your Merchant Email Address with your Paypal account. All completed transactions will be stored on this accounts. If your site still undergoing testing phase, you can left this field blank.

   • Sandbox Mode — Enable this if and only if your site still undergoing testing phase.

   • Sandbox Merchant Email — Fill them if and only if you have enabled Sandbox Mode and your site still undergoing testing phase. Fill them with your Merchant Email that you use for Paypal's testing account.

   • Re-attempt Failed Recurring Payments — This option determines if the failed recurring payment should be re-attempt (As paypal will re-attept after 3 days after recurring payment failure).

   • Website Language Encoding — This option determines the language encoding of the website that is used when data is transferred to PayPal when you do payment By default it should be UTF-8.

     

PayPal Workflow with PayPlans

This is how the integration between PayPal and PayPlans work on the front-end:

• Subscribe to any plan on the site and pick PayPal from the payment method. Then, check-out as usual.

• You will then be redirected to PayPal's website

• PayPal will display different payment types depending on the type of the plan:

  • Fixed Plans (non recurring)

    

    

    

  • Fixed payment with Credit Card

    

  • Recurring Plans

    

    

    

Common Issues

• If you are using Live Paypal Account & Sandbox mode on the same browser, you will need to clear your browser's cache from time to time or you may encounter unexpected errors on Paypal's website.

• In case of recurring plans configuration, Recurrence Count should be greater than 1 and less than 50, if you set it to 0 it means it will charge for forever, until cancellation.

• In case of recurring plans configuration, Expiration Time can not be lifetime. It should be some valid time like in day/month/year.

Frequently Asked Question

Question

I am getting the error message "This invoice has already been paid".

Answer

Chances are that you have set this up on multiple sites and they contain a similar invoice id. This can be solved by following the steps below:

• Login to PayPal Account and access Profile > Payment Receiving Preferences

• Under the Block Accidental Payments, you need to change it to No, allow multiple payments per invoice ID

Question

How do I resend payment notifications to PayPlans on PayPal?

Answer

To resend payment notifications to PayPlans from PayPal, you need to follow the steps below:

• Login to your PayPal account

• Click the settings icon at the top of your PayPal account page and then click Account Settings.

• On the Notifications page, click the Update link for the Instant payment notifications item.Click Choose IPN Settings to specify your listener's URL and activate the listener. The following page will contain the link of IPN History.

• If needed, you can use the calendars to select a date range and click on the Search button

• Select the items that you want to resend, and click on the Resend Selected button

Question

For some reasons, subscriptions are not activated when user makes payment with PayPal

Answer

There are several possible scenarios which you can check:

• Ensure that Instant Payment Notifications (IPN) are enabled on PayPal. You may refer to the IPN Setup Guide from PayPal. You should enter the following URL in your IPN URL:

  https://yoursite.com/index.php?option=com_payplans&view=payment&task=notify
  

• There is also another possibility that you have enabled Payment Review on your PayPal Business Account. Head over to your PayPal Account and click on Test Accounts where you will find the settings as shown below:

  

  Now as the customer completed his payment process at his account the payment status at Merchant Account will be as shown below:

  

  After enabling payment review option payment will not come into effect until you manually review it from your account. After review or accept payment its status at customers account becomes as shown below

  

Question

I am getting Invalid PayPal Receiver Email error messages

Answer

Chances are that the Merchant E-mail address is incorrect or has incorrect case sensitivity. Ensure that the Merchant E-mail address is exactly as your PayPal e-mail address and it is case sensitive.

Question

How to cancel Recurring subscription ?

Answer

In case PayPal, users/merchants need to cancel their recurring payments from their PayPal account.
Because Paypal API doesn't provide this functionality to cancel recurring subscriptions from the site itself.