Passing a custom variable to the PayPal API

Question

Gday All,

I am developing a site that uses PayPal to take online payments.

I need to be able to send my client an email with the link to PayPal in order to pay.

In this link I need a way to set a unique value (for example bookingId) that I can use to add the receipt number to the correct booking via PayPal's payment notification feature.

Does anyone know what custom value I can set in order to achieve this?

Cheers, Michael

Answer 1

The "item_name" field will be displayed to the user and can be set to whatever you like. I use it for conference registration ID's, while using item_number to track what was actually purchased.

Answer 2

Use Invoice field.

Answer 3

You can use any of the following passthrough variables:

• custom
• item_number or item_number_x
• invoice

See page 409 in the PayPal Website Payments Standard Integration Guide: https://cms.paypal.com/cms_content/US/en_US/files/developer/PP_WebsitePaymentsStandard_IntegrationGuide.pdf

for details.