User's Manual
Table Of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- PayPal Payments Overview
- Getting Started
- PayPal Account Optional
- Creating Buy Now and Donation Buttons
- Creating Shopping Cart Buttons
- Adding PayPal to Your Third- party Shopping Cart
- Custom Payment Pages
- Calculating Shipping, Handling, and Tax
- Creating Customer Contact Telephone
- Auto Return
- Backend Integration - Payment Notifications
- Using Multiple Currencies
- Language Encoding for Your Data
- Testing
- Processing eChecks
- Security
- HTML Samples
- IPN and PDT Variables
- About These Tables of Variables
- test_ipn Variable in Sandbox
- IPN Variables in All Posts
- Buyer Information
- Basic Information
- Advanced and Custom Information
- Shopping Cart Information
- Currency and Currency Exchange
- Auctions
- Mass Payment
- Subscriptions Variables
- Dispute Notification Variables
- PDT-Specific Variables
- Country Codes
Backend Integration - Payment Notifications
Payment Data Transfer
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96 May, 2005 Merchant User Manual and Integration Guide
z History Log: View an online record of your received and sent payments.
z Downloadable Logs: Keep track of your transaction history by downloading it into
various file formats (suitable for financial settlements).
For more information about PayPal's reports, see
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-
bin/webscr?cmd=p/xcl/rec/reports-intro-outside.
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) and Payment Data Transfer (PDT)
PDT’s primary function is to display payment transaction details to buyers when they are
automatically redirected back to your site upon payment completion; however, there are cases
where you will not receive notification of all transactions, such as with pending transactions,
refunds, and reversals. For these reasons, or if you are using this data to fulfill orders, PayPal
strongly recommends that you also enable Instant Payment Notification (IPN).
Both IPN and PDT send back the same data; however, there are several important differences.
PDT:
z Requires Auto Return to be enabled.
z Auto Return will include an ID that can be used to query PayPal for the complete
transaction details.
z It is possible to miss a notification if the user closes the browser before the redirection is
complete.
IPN:
z Does not require Auto Return to be enabled.
z At the end of the website payment flow, PayPal POSTs the IPN data asynchronously (i.e.
not as part of the website payment flow).
z IPNs will also POST for eCheck clearings, reversals, and refunds.
SSL Security Not Required for IPN
Because credit card and bank information is not transmitted in Instant Payment Notification
(IPN), PayPal does not require the use of SSL to encrypt IPN transmissions.
Payment Data Transfer
Payment Data Transfer (PDT) provides merchants with the ability to display transaction
details to buyers who are redirected back to their site upon payment completion.
NOTE: You must enable Auto Return for Website Payments to use Payment Data Transfer.
Auto Return brings your buyers back to your website immediately after payment
completion. Auto Return applies to PayPal Website Payments, including Buy Now,
Donations, Subscriptions, and Shopping Cart. For more information on Auto Return,
Chapter 11, “Auto Return.”