Charge cards infrequently with PayPal possible?

Question

I'm selling a print magazine (physical object) that comes out every 3-4 months, so the period is not always 100% frequent. I know that PayPal can process reoccurring payments such as monthly online subscriptions. However, in my case, I'd like to be able to store people's credit card (or have them stored by PP) and manually initiate a charge whenever a new issue is out.

Is this possible with PayPal? Maybe with its new RestAPI? Or an external tool? Thanks!

Kai

Answer 1

Yes, this is possible with PayPal. You have quite a few options.

You could use Reference Transactions. This involves the DoReferenceTransaction API, which accepts the transaction ID of a previous authorization or sale transaction as well as the amount you'd like to charge for the new transaction. The system will use the billing info PayPal has saved to charge the new amount without any further approval.

If you're doing this with Payments Pro there's not much special to it. You just process an initial transaction and then use that transaction ID in future calls to DoReferenceTransaction to process variable amounts at variable times.

If you're doing this with Express Checkout you need to make sure and include billing agreement info in your SetExpressCheckout request. DoReferenceTransaction won't work for you on Express Checkout transactions without a billing agreement setup.

Another option would be to use the Adaptive Payments platform, specifically Preapproval and Pay. You can use the Preapproval API to have users create the profile with your application. From that point on your application can use the Pay API and include the preapproval key for the payer on any particular transaction to submit payments accordingly.

The new REST API does have the ability to "store a credit card" and use it for future payments, but I don't think it has a way to do the same with Express Checkout yet. I could be wrong about that, though.

I personally still prefer Express Checkout with billing agreements and Payments Pro (for direct credit cards.)