I'm a bit of a newb and have never integrated paypal into a website before so I apologise for my lack of knowledge. I'm trying to build a website which allows users to sign up and, assuming they get themselves paypal premier accounts (so they can receive payments by credit card) they will be able to receive payments from other users of my site. So someone will sign up using their Paypal email address, and other users will then be able to send them money through my site. If they use one of my special services then I also want to be able to take a 1% fee of the money sent. I'm using cakephp and I've searched and found a few cakephp related paypal components but to me it seems that these are aimed at people who want to just use their own paypal account to receive money. Like having a paypal checkout button. Whereas I want to be able to direct money into many different paypal accounts. Is this possible? And if so can any kind soul direct me to where I should be reading (pref something not too difficult - I'm a learner!). Also as a side note, are there any special security issues I need to take care of when dealing with paypal, especially considering the particular nature of what I want to achieve? How easy would it be for a bad person to alter someones paypal email to direct funds to themselves? many thanks in advance
Use Paypal IPN to process the payment. Paypal sends money to whatever account details (email etc) you configure with IPN script, so you can use dynamic payment button and dynamically insert email address in IPN (like from a database). Now if you want to get 1% or whatever as commission, you ought to get the money in your account first, deduct the commission, then send the rest of the money to seller. This whole process can be made automated, provided you have enough knowledge of PHP, Paypal and it's IPN. As far as security is concerned, you should take same precautions as you take with any other PHP app i.e. Always filter tainted data (Like user input), Use encryption for sensitive User info (like Credit Card number or phone number or address) etc..
Hi there, thanks for the response. I've been reading through the paypal website all day and have only managed to get even more confused than before. There seems like so many different ways of doing things that it's hard to figure which exact combination of methods would result in the best system. I want to make it all as user friendly and professional as possible. So I want donors to be able to donate money by using their credit cards (or paypal account if they have one) and I don't want them to have to off my site to be able to do all this. You suggest using IPN which is something i'll have to read up on because I haven't come across it before but it's since been advised to me that I should be using a website payments pro account and parallel payments to do this best. I'm totally confused. It's great that paypal have so many options but trying to figure out which one's best (especially when their documentation goes into great detail but doesn't mention how much it will cost in the same place). What's the best way to go with this?
Can't tell you what is the best for you, I can only guess based on what you said.. And my guess is that you should go with IPN.. Also, user has to leave your site in order to make a payment through paypal. Here is the link to one tutorial: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/using-paypals-instant-payment-notification-with-php/ On the side note: If you are not sure what to use and how to do that, You should consider hiring someone who can do the job for you..
Without question, IPN is probably the best way to go, it is quite confusing at first, but after you take your time and slowly build up a system (using paypal sandbox to test - thats a whole new set of challenges too!!) you should be fine. One word of caution though, you are leaving yourself wide open for getting ripped off. Say you take a payment of $10 from Mr.X, take your $1 cut and move the $9 to the other member Mr.Y - all good, totally possible too. But... what then happens if the Mr.X does a dispute, most of the time as paypal is a pain, you have no proof of service, so they will refund Mr.X - leaving you out of pocket The simplest way to really do this is to only pay out the people (after your cut) after a period of time, allowing any chance of dispute to pass. Depending upon your time and ability - you could do this, there is enough info about - or it may be better to outsource it? If you only wanted the mechanism, you should easily find coders to do this at a good price. I'd normally offer to help further, but this is a project rather than snippets of code I provide. Good luck, feel free to ask questions. Si
I don't want to hire someone coz I'm trying to learn it myself. Hence why I don't know anything (yet!) but am trying to struggle through with it. I've read the tutorial you sent and I think I understand. But it still seems clunkier than I was hoping. Plus I'm reading on the forums and there's seems to be conflicting advice as to whether credit cards can be accepted under certain circumstances and whether the people making the payment need to have a paypal account in the first place. All I want is for someone to be able to sign up to my website and be able to receive payments into their ordinary paypal account (do they need a paying account?). Preferably people paying would stay on my website. I'd also like the people who are making payments to be able to use credit cards in case they don't have a paypal account. (does that create problems for the recipient of the money? Would my users need to have a business paypal account) What's the best, cheapest and most professional way of doing this?
Fair enough, and sure you can do it.. There many options to accept credit card payments without customers having a paypal account. one is to use Guest Payment service by paypal (Never used it, not sure how it works), another is to use CheckOut by paypal (needs you to use paypal API). You can also use AccountOptional setting for the same purpose, which is the easiest way to do that https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/cps/general/OptionalAccount-outside Your buyers do not need to have a business account, and there is no such thing as paying account.. With any account type (Personal, premium and business) you can make payment and receive payment. But in any case your visitor has to leave your site, and go to paypal, in order to make a payment. Cheapest way is by doing it yourself, best way is whatever fills your need, and professional way... well, do it professionally