PayPal is an alternative way to allow your customers to pay using credit cards and electronic checks without you having to incur the expenses of a merchant account. PayPal performs the transaction on their website, and adds the money to your PayPal account. For more information about PayPal, see their official site at http://www.paypal.com.

 

This section describes how to configure Squirrelcart with PayPal's traditional payment method, which is called "PayPal Website Payments Standard". This does not cover PayPal's new service called "PayPal Website Payments Pro", which acts more like a traditional payment gateway. Instructions on setting up PayPal Website Payments Pro can be found in the topic with the same name in the Configuration > Payment > Payment Gateways > Supported Gateways section of this documentation.

 

Before you can accept payments via PayPal, you will need to sign up for an account. You can do so by clicking the "sign up" link at http://www.paypal.com. When you complete the registration, you will have specified an email address to receive payments to. You will need this email address to configure Squirrelcart to work with PayPal.

Auto Return for Website Payments allows merchants to eliminate the Payment Receipt page in the Website Payments flow and automatically return buyers to their website upon payment completion.

 

Payment Data Transfer provides merchants with the ability to add additional security to a transaction by having your web server send a behind-the-scenes query to PayPal to ensure that the data received from an "Auto Return" did indeed come from PayPal. PDT requires CURL and OpenSSL.

 

PayPal's Instant Payment Notification allows you to integrate PayPal payments with Squirrelcart's order management feature. IPN provides immediate notification and confirmation of PayPal payments you receive, and allows Squirrelcart to update the payment status on orders in your database. If you activate IPN, you will receive an IPN when a payment is first received, which will display the status of the payment (Completed or Pending). If the payment status was Pending, you will receive another IPN when the payment clears, fails, or is denied. IPN requires CURL and OpenSSL.

The payment process flow will vary depending on which (if any) of the supported features you enable. The illustration below demonstrates the payment process flow based on your configuration.

 

Auto Return, PDT, and IPN are optional. First, we will explain how to setup Squirrelcart to accept PayPal payments without using these additional components. Then we will explain how to enable the additional features. Please read this section in its entirety before following the steps.

 

1. If you do not have a PayPal account, visit PayPal.com and signup.
2. Login to Squirrelcart as admin and open the control panel.
3. Click Settings > Payment > Methods from the admin menu system.
4. Click on the record labeled PayPal
5. Enter your PayPal payment email address in the Payment Email Address field.
6. Make sure the PayPal Mode field is set to Live
7. Choose your currency using the Currency Code field.
8. Check the Enabled field
9. Click

 

There are no additional requirements for Auto Return. We recommend that you enable it, as it will allow Squirrelcart to complete the order AFTER the customer has submitted payment. With Auto Return off, the order is completed before the customer is sent to PayPal.

1. Open PayPal's record in Squirrelcart (see Basic Setup above)
2. Check the Auto Return checkbox
3. Click
4. Login to your account at PayPal.com
5. Click the Profile tab
6. Click Website Payment Preferences
   
   
   Click to enlarge
7. Click "On" in the "Auto Return for Website Payments" section.
8. Enter the secure (https) URL to your storefront in the "Return URL" field. If you do not have a secure URL, enter your regular URL (http).
9. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save"

 

PDT requires CURL and OpenSSL. Do not enable PDT unless CURL and OpenSSL are available.

1. Auto Return must be enabled. Follow the instructions in Auto Return Setup above.
2. Login to PayPal.com
3. Click the Profile tab
4. Click Website Payment Preferences
5. In the Payment Data Transfer section, click on
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save
7. When you click Save a message will appear at the top of the page indicating that you have successfully saved your preferences. Your identity token will also appear in the context of this message. You will need this information in the next step. Select the entire line of text after "Identity Token:" and copy it to your clipboard. This token will always be available should you need it on the Website Payment Preferences page.
8. Open PayPal's record in Squirrelcart (see Basic Setup above) 
9. Check the PDT field. The Identity Token field will appear to the right.
10. Paste your Identity Token in the Identity Token field
11. Click

 

IPN requires CURL and OpenSSL. Do not enable PDT unless CURL and OpenSSL are available.

1. Auto Return must be enabled. Follow the instructions in Auto Return Setup above.
2. Login to your PayPal account at PayPal.com
3. Click the Profile tab
4. Click Instant Payment Notification Preferences
5. Click Edit
6. Click the checkbox, and enter the URL as follows:
   

   http://www.EXAMPLE.COM/squirrelcart/paypal_ipn.php

   Change the domain name to match your site. If you have installed Squirrelcart in a subdirectory, be sure to add that to the URL. For example, if your storefront page is http://www.example.com/store/store.php, then your IPN URL would be http://www.example.com/store/squirrelcart/paypal_ipn.php.
7. Click Save
8. Open PayPal's record in Squirrelcart (see Basic Setup above)
9. Check the IPN field
10. Click  

To ensure that IPN is working, we've added a testing feature. It is designed to send an email to your PayPal email address whenever your website receives an IPN from PayPal. The email will contain all the data that was sent to your site. To enable this test feature, follow these instructions.

1. Make sure IPN is enabled per the instructions above.
2. Open the PayPal record in Squirrelcart
3. Check the Test IPN checkbox
4. Click

 

 

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