Integrating PayPal checkout

Question

I have a shop system that integrates PayPal in the usual way, i.e. the user is redirected to paypal.com to log in and confirm the payment after which the user is directed back at a confirmation page in my shop system.

Now my customer is asking if the entire process can be run inside the shop itself.

I have two or three ideas about this (not that it really matters, but the site is PHP based):

1. Use cURL functions serverside to talkto paypal, show all required forms inside the shop pages. Probably not a good idea.

2. Use an <iframe> to display the paypal pages as they are. Off the top of my had this should work fine but wouldn't be as pretty.

3. Use some kind of PayPal API. I've only seen something that seems to require a Pro account (for the seller) with PayPal and does only work with credit card payments.

I'm not an expert on PayPal integration, the current solution came with the shop software. If any of you guys could shed some light on the pros, cons and impossibles I'd be very grateful.

Answer 1

This is from a few months ago, so may have been changed, but from what I remember Paypals APIs do not allow you to integrate a Paypal interface completely into a shop. This is because once you are off the paypal servers they lose control and can be liable for misuse of the API.

From what I remember of it using Paypal for payments does require the user to log into their paypal account and so Paypal do not want this under the control of any other site except their own.

Answer 2

Paypal offers Direct Payment as part of their API. This allows you to process a payment without visiting the PayPal website. As noted in the document, you must also offer Express Checkout (the redirect to Paypal), if you use Direct Payment.

Answer 3

Vendors rarely do this, but you can customize the appearance of your PayPal pages so that they sorta kinda match your web site. I'm glad they rarely do this, because the customized pages generally resemble butt. The MySpace-type experience does not fill me with financial confidence.

I think people that have PayPal accounts are quite accustomed to going off to PayPal to pay for things, and they would probably actually not trust your site if the PayPal stuff appeared inside your shop. If you are just looking to woo credit card using customers, use some other service.