For Which Countries Does PayPal Require a State?

Question

When using PayPal (no matter which integration I think), we sometimes get the following error:

PAYPAL GATEWAY HAS REJECTED REQUEST. THE FIELD SHIPPING ADDRESS STATE IS REQUIRED (#10729: SHIPPING ADDRESS STATE EMPTY).

This was already the case for China and Japan. So we added these countries to the list of countries where the state is required (under System - Configuration - General). But for which countries does PayPal also require the state field? I guess there are more. We also asked the PayPal merchant support, but they could not give us any information (screw you, guys!). Maybe someone else has a complete list or we can build up one together?

Answer 1

The following countries are known to require a state by PayPal:

• Argentinia
• Australia
• Canada
• China
• Hong Kong
• India
• Indonesia
• Japan
• Mexico
• Russia
• Switzerland
• Thailand
• United States

Answer 2

Check out the following on the PayPal developer site: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/state_codes/

Answer 3

At the time of Paypal Express Checkout the customer enter City, State, and Postal Code if these three are not match the Paypal throws an error.

i.e, PayPal gateway has rejected request. A match of the Shipping Address City, State, and Postal Code failed (#10736: Shipping Address Invalid City State Postal Code) But Some of the Clients don’t want this validation.

For that you do changes on you Paypal module Api.

The change is /app/code/core/Mage/Paypal/Model/Api/Nvp.php file

in callSetExpressCheckout() Method

remove the line $request[\’ADDROVERRIDE\’] = 1;

after that your customer use the Paypal checkout with not matching of state , city and postal code it’s working fine.