Adding PayPal button to user page

by wipeman

Hi there
If we have a SaaS where I allow users to set up a booking page for their business, is there a simple way to allow them to take payments online? I wouldn't need a cut of the proceeds. It would be ideal if the amount could be made dynamic - e.g. I could generate a button that paid a certain amount.
Most useful would be a way for my site to be notified when a payment was successfully completed. In the old days there was a PayPal IPN but IIRC that pinged whenever that user bought anything and was a royal PITA for them to set up.
What do other people on here use? Would be v grateful for any pointers.

wipeman

posted to

Developers

on February 4, 2020

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I'd go with Stripe too, but if you want to use PayPal, their smart payment buttons are good and easy to implement: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/checkout/
I believe paypal won't notify your server via webhook. But you have to specify a custom success callback, so you use this to ping your backend.

ezakto

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4 years ago
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1. 2
  Thanks for this. I had just seen the custom paypal button on this page:
  
  https://www.dummies.com/business/online-business/ebay/how-to-create-a-paypal-button-on-your-website/
  
  and yes I think that would work. I noticed it seems possible to be able to add a IPN url as well with the 'Advanced Features' page e.g.
  
  address_override=1 notify_url=https://www.mywebsite.com/PayPal_IPN
  
  The button can then be made into a URL with all of these as GET parameters. I'll test it out when I get a chance and see what info is sent to that IPN link. Looks promising though :)
  
  Thanks to all for your replies!
  wipeman
  
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  4 years ago
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  1. 1
    Tried it and it works. In case it helps anyone here:
    
    you set up a button on your site according to that above link
    
    your IPN URL needs to be https or it seems to be ignored
    
    the user is not automatically redirected to your 'success URL' after the payment is complete - they have to choose to do so by clicking 'return to merchant', so the IPN notify_url is more reliable. It arrives a few minutes after the payment.
    
    either PayPal or ngrok are stripping the trailing slash of my notify_url so safer to make sure you can POST to your callback both with or without one.
    
    you can add an item ID to the button which is passed through so you can identify the payment against your database when the POST data arrives.
    
    Perhaps a little overkill but thought example (obfuscated in places) POST data might be useful:
    {'mc_gross': ['0.01'],
    'protection_eligibility': ['Ineligible'],
    'payer_id': ['XXXXXXXXXXXX'],
    'payment_date': ['16:27:20 Feb 06, 2020 PST'],
    'payment_status': ['Completed'],
    'charset': ['windows-1252'],
    'first_name': ['Joe'], 'mc_fee': ['0.01'],
    'notify_version': ['3.9'],
    'custom': [''], 'payer_status': ['verified'],
    'business': ['[email protected]'],
    'quantity': ['1'],
    'verify_sign': ['xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'],
    'payer_email': ['[email protected]'],
    'txn_id': ['7Xxxxxxxxxxxxx3R'],
    'payment_type': ['instant'],
    'last_name': ['Bloggs'],
    'receiver_email': ['[email protected]'],
    'payment_fee': [''],
    'shipping_discount': ['0.00'],
    'receiver_id': ['XXXXXXXXXXXXXX'],
    'insurance_amount': ['0.00'],
    'txn_type': ['web_accept'],
    'item_name': ['Item name goes here'],
    'discount': ['0.00'],
    'mc_currency': ['GBP'],
    'item_number': ['ITEM ID ON YOUR SITE'],
    'residence_country': ['GB'],
    'shipping_method': ['Default'],
    'transaction_subject': [''],
    'payment_gross': [''],
    'ipn_track_id': ['xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx']}
    
    Hopefully the bank won't stop my credit card because of all the suspicious £0.01 transactions I've been making tonight :D
    
    This will get me moving forward. Very pleased.
    
    wipeman
    
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    4 years ago
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  2. 1
    
    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.
    
    wipeman
    
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    4 years ago
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I'd go with Stripe for this. You can dynamically create one-time/recurring payments and you can also get notified via Events if e.g. a charge went through. Stripe is very developer friendly and has a few libraries for all major languages.

https://stripe.com/docs/api
https://stripe.com/docs/api/charges
https://stripe.com/docs/api/events

MarcMogdanz

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4 years ago
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1. 2
  
  Thanks, I've heard good things about Stripe :)
  
  wipeman
  
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  4 years ago
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