PayPal Recurring Payments API

Question

I'm working with PayPal Recurring Payments API now. But it happens that I need a specific feature. Let's think about the following scenario,

• my costumer has a profile in my website that he pays 100U$ every month, but in a specific month there is a tax he must pay in the next month.

Is there a way to add a tax just to next month, not as the TAXAMT, that is for all cycle. In other hand, maybe I want to give a discount to the next payment only, not for complete cycle. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Recurring Payments profiles are meant to be setup with a single amount that will be charged on a regular basis. You can adjust the amount, but then you'd have to adjust it back when/if necessary. Also, if using Recurring Payments with Express Checkout you can only increase the amount by 20% every 90 days (or it might even be 120 days).

If you need to process additional charges every now and then I would recommend running an Authorization through Express Checkout or Payments Pro depending on what you're using. You could simply authorize the person's credit card or account using a card verification / $0 authorization.

From then on you can process additional payments of variable amounts using Reference Transactions (DoReferenceTransaction).

You might also be interested in checking out Adaptive Payments, specifically Preapproval / Pay. This allows users to preapprove payments amounts based on criteria specified in the Preapproval request. You can then submit payments on their behalf at any time as long as they fall within that preapproval profile.