PayPal Commerce

What It Is

PayPal Commerce Platform is an integration option for PayPal that supports both credit/debit card payments directly on the checkout (available in specific countries), as well as the ability to pay with a PayPal account, PayPal Credit, Venmo and a number of other local payment methods that PayPal supports with PayPal Checkout

PayPal Checkout

PayPal Checkout is what most people think of when they think of PayPal, where customers can pay with their PayPal account through PayPal's payment pages. While previous integrations redirected the customer to a PayPal hosted payment page, PayPal Commerce Platform's Checkout integration loads a popup over the page, which provides a much cleaner experience for customers.

PayPal Checkout also supports local payment methods like Bancontact, BLIK, eps, giropay, iDEAL, MyBank, Przelewy24 (P24) and SOFORT. Local options will be dynamically determined on the checkout based on the location of the customer, and the type of products being ordered (whether subscriptions or one-off).

PayPal Checkout is supported in all countries where PayPal payments are supported, and just requires a PayPal account.

If you're selling subscriptions, the local payment methods aren't supported for recurring payments. Customers will just see PayPal as a payment option if a subscription is present in the cart.

PayPal Checkout With Card Payments

Along with offering PayPal and local payment options, Commerce Platform also has the ability to accept credit cards directly on the Foxy checkout without the customer leaving the page.

Card payments isn't supported for all countries, and requires a PayPal Business account and some additional application requirements apply. Countries currently supported include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States

Setting Up PayPal Commerce Platform for FoxyCart

Connecting PayPal with your Foxy store is completed by following an authentication flow from the Foxy administration:

1. 1

   In the Foxy administration, navigate to the Payment page

2. 2

   Enable the checkbox labelled “Accept payments using your PayPal Commerce Platform account”

3. 3

   In the options that appear, click the “Connect to…” button for the PayPal option you want to connect to, whether just PayPal Checkout, or PayPal Checkout with Card Payments (if it's supported in your country).

4. 4

   Clicking the button will redirect you to PayPal to log in to your account and provide the necessary details. Depending on the type of PayPal integration you selected, you may need to provide a number of different details to PayPal to complete the flow.

5. 5

   Once you complete the necessary information, you will be redirected back to the Foxy administration

6. 6

   If the connection was successful, you will see the connected email address shown. If you connected with Card Payments, you will have some additional settings

   1. Card verification mode: To set whether to verify entered card details for $0 purchases, or for all purchases

   2. Authorize only: If enabled, will only authorize funds and not capture them. Funds will need to be manually captured through the PayPal administration (or through Foxy if your store is enable for the beta capture/refund functionality)

   3. Show credit card form: Check this box to show the credit card form on the checkout for payments by card. You can leave this unchecked to use a different gateway for card based payments.

Setting Up Your Currency

Because PayPal Checkout (unlike most gateways) can accept a variety of currencies, it's important to set your currency in your FoxyCart admin's “template sets” page, through the “store locale” option. Otherwise it may default to the USD, which may not be what you're after.

Subscriptions And Recurring BiIlling With PayPal Checkout

If you are selling subscriptions or recurring billing products through FoxyCart and are offering PayPal Checkout as a payment option, you must request Reference Transaction support to be enabled on your PayPal account. Please note that a Premier or Business account is also required to enable Reference Transactions.

Reference Transactions is PayPal functionality that allows FoxyCart to create a billing agreement with your store's customers who wish to pay with PayPal, to allow us to continue to charge your subscription customers at each renewal. It's not enabled by default though for your account, and so you need to contact PayPal to ask for it to be enabled.

Our PayPal rep has let us know that the best number for FoxyCart users in the US to call to get Reference Transaction support enabled for their accounts is 1-888-221-1161. For our users outside of the US, you can reach out to your local PayPal support number - after logging into your account, select “Help & Contact” at the bottom of the page, followed by “Call Us” to see the number for your region. Let them know you'd like to have Reference Transaction support enabled for your PayPal account. If you have any trouble, please let us know and we'll help walk you through it.

Authorize Only

If you would like to only authorize payments from customers, and then manually capture the funds later, this can be enabled using the “authorize only (do not capture funds)” checkbox.

PayPal Credit

PayPal Commerce Platform also supports PayPal Credit as a payment option. There isn't anything that needs to be enabled, and it will be shown dynamically to customers if PayPal determines that they meet the criteria to be able to use it.

Testing

Obtaining A Test Account

Testing PayPal Express Checkout is a little different than normal, as PayPal has a fully functional sandbox system. It's slightly cumbersome and confusing at first, but it does work very well once you figure it out.

Running Test PayPal Express Checkout Transactions

1. 1

   First, set up a sandbox account as directed on this page.

2. 2

   Once your sandbox account is created, you'll need to create a test buyer and a test seller account on this page. In its current iteration, PayPal automatically creates one buyer (your email appended with “-buyer”, and has a type corresponding to PERSONAL) and one seller (your email appended with “-facilitator”, and has a type corresponding to BUSINESS)

3. 3

   Login to the sandbox with your buyer account and replenish its funds.

4. 4

   In your FoxyCart admin, go to the Edit Payment Gateway section and complete the connection flow using your test seller account credentials for PayPal Commerce Platform

5. 5

   Attempt a checkout FoxyCart's PayPal Checkout from the same browser that you are already logged into the PayPal Sandbox from. Use the test buyer email address to complete the payment. Again, because you have to be logged into the PayPal Sandbox to process a test transaction it will not work unless you're both logged into the sandbox and attempting your FoxyCart checkout flow in the same browser.

Test Card Numbers

Review the test account you created (above). All test information should be there.