CFWebstore® can process payments through either PayPal Standard or PayPal Pro. This section allows you to configure your PayPal settings and turn on a PayPal order button to allow checkout through PayPal. PayPal Pro is considered a Payment Processor since it accepts credit cards from within your store so is turned on under the Credit Cards Orders section. PayPal Pro includes automatic enabling of PayPal Express so you will want to leave the “Use PayPal” setting turned off. However, you will want to configure the rest of the settings to properly set up your store for handling Express payments.
PayPal Settings
Use PayPal – Set this to Yes to enable PayPal in your checkout. You can use it as the sole payment method, or as an option to credit card payments
PayPal Method – CFWebstore includes both Standard and Express methods. Standard will present a PayPal payment button at the end of the checkout process, before generating a final receipt. With Express, the customer chooses the PayPal option at the beginning of checkout, goes to the PayPal site to select their shipping address and payment type, and then returns to your store to complete the order. With Express, the customer’s billing information is kept confidential. If you have problems getting the IPN transactions to work reliably, Express is a good option to use.
PayPal Server – You can configure your store to run either live or sandbox transactions to PayPal. Please note that if using the sandbox, you will need to use the sandbox merchant account below, and be logged into the sandbox when running your test orders.
PayPal Account – This is your PayPal account that will be receiving the payments. Please note that if you have multiple emails set up, it needs to be the primary email address on the account.
PDT Token – PayPal includes two different ways to return information to your store, PDT and IPN. While you can use only one or the other, we find that configuring both gives the best results and most reliable results. To enable PDT, go to Profile – My Selling Settings – Website Preferences and click Update. Set Auto Return to ON, and add the Return URL listed below under IPN settings. Set Payment Data Transfer to On. Set all the other settings as you prefer and save. You will be given the PDT token to enter on this screen.
Log Messages – This will log the results of all PayPal transactions, including those received by IPN. It can be particularly helpful to debug any issues with payments not being received or orders failing to complete. Keep in mind that this is a plain text file that will continually grow over time so is best turned off unless you are tracking a problem or plan to manually clean it out from time to time. The log file is found in the “logs” directory of your store.
PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN)
IPN is the method used to send transaction information from PayPal to your store. It will complete the order in the event that the customer doesn’t return to the store after payment, as well as automatically update your orders with information on refunds, chargebacks, rejected payments, etc. To user IPN, you will need to enable it for your PayPal Profile. After logging into your PayPal account, go to Profile – My Selling Tools - Instant Payment Notification and click the Update link. Click the button to Choose IPN Settings if shown. Check the box to receive IPN notifications, for the URL enter the following (set it for http or https as appropriate for your site):
The store will also send this address to PayPal as part of the checkout process, as well as cancel and return links, so be sure your Secure and Store URLs are entered correctly in the config.cfm file, as they are used to create these.
PayPal Express
If you are using PayPal Pro, or set the PayPal checkout to use Express, you will receive an additional tab in the Payment Settings to configure the Express Checkout process. First, you will need to enable API access and generate an API signature. Go to your PayPal account and go to Profile – My Selling Tools – API Access and click the Update link. If this is your first time using API settings, click on the link to Request API credentials. Otherwise it should just say View API credentials. After clicking the link to Request API Credentials, you will have the option of using API signature or API certificate. For CFWebstore you will use the API signature methods. Click Agree and Submit to generate the API username, password and signature key. Now return to CFWebstore and fill out the PayPal Settings tab as follows:
Username – The PayPal API username from the API Access section
Password – The PayPal API password from the API Access section
Signature – The PayPal API signature from the API Access section
Transaction Type – Sets your account to immediately capture the funds, or if you have to handle back orders, set to authorize only.