Advanced Billing can use PayPal’s WebSite Payments Pro to process credit cards. The WebSite Payments Pro acts as a payment gateway and merchant account in one.
API USERNAME, API PASSWORD AND SIGNATURE
In order to obtain your API Username, API Password and Signature, you must enable API Access with PayPal.
To obtain your API Username, API Password and Signature:
- Login to Paypal –> Profile –> Request API credentials –> Option 1 (Paypal API) –> Setup Paypal Api credentials and permissions → Option 2 (Request API credentials to create your own API username and password) → View API signature
REQUIREMENTS
To get started with PayPal’s Website Payments Pro, you only need to sign up for their base account. You do not need their Recurring Payments feature—that’s handled by Advanced Billing.
CARD SECURITY CODE (CSC)
Some PayPal accounts are required to present the Card Security Code (CSC) for every transaction. After you setup your PayPal credentials, Advanced Billing will verify your credentials. If Advanced Billing determines your account requires CSC for every transaction, you will need to contact PayPal to disable this requirement before your account can be used with Advanced Billing.
Important note: By default, Advanced Billing requires the CSC (also known as CVV) to start a new subscription or transaction. Due to PCI requirements, Advanced Billing cannot store the CSC. Therefore, Advanced Billing submits recurring transactions without the CSC, and your PayPal account must be configured to not require this value.
CONFIGURING ADVANCED BILLING TO USE PAYPAL
Advanced Billing requires the PayPal API Username, API Password, and Signature (preferred) or PEM Certificate to connect to your PayPal WebSite Payments Pro account. To retrieve your Signature from PayPal, follow these steps:
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Log in to your PayPal account at paypal.com
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On the My Account tab, click on the Profile sub-tab.
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Click on API access or Request API credentials, depending on your PayPal account type.
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PayPal will present two options: granting API permissions (Option 1) and requesting API credentials (Option 2). Select option 2. It may say View API Signature or View API Credentials.
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If you have already requested an API Signature, you will now see your API credentials.
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The final page will display your API username, password and signature. All three pieces are required to connect Advanced Billing to your PayPal Website Payments Pro account.
PEM versus Signature
Advanced Billing supports connecting to your PayPal account using the PEM or signature for credit card transactions. If in the future you wish to support payments via PayPal (in addition to credit cards), you must use the signature API credentials. If you have created a PEM certificate, you will need to delete the PEM certificate and walk through the process of choosing the signature credentials.
CANADA AND AMERICAN EXPRESS
Please note, PayPal Website Payments Pro in Canada does not support American Express.
ADDRESS REQUIREMENTS
PayPal Website Payments Pro requires full address information to be submitted for every transaction. If you are using PayPal WPP, please set Advanced Billing to require the full billing address (name, phone, street address, city, state/province, postal/zip, and country).
DATA PORTABILITY POLICY
As of the time of this publication, PayPal Website Payments Pro (Payflow) allows exporting to another Level 1 PCI compliant entity. For up to the minute portablity information, please contact PayPal directly.
PayPal Website Payments Pro US-CA-UK “Legacy Edition”
In order to configure PayPal Website Payments Pro for use with Advanced Billing, you will need to provide Advanced Billing with your API Username, API Password, and Signature.
If you have not enabled API Access on your PayPal account, you may do this by logging in to your PayPal account and doing the following:
- In the “My Account” tab, click on the “Profile” submenu
- Under the “Account Information” section, follow the “API Access” link
- Follow the link for “Request API Credendtials” (under Option 2)
- Select “Request API signature” (not “Request API certificate”) and click “Agree and Submit”
Important Notes & Error Conditions
- On the Advanced Billing gateway configuration screen, where we request your API Username and API Password, you will need to provide us with the Username and Password specific to your API Access - this is not the same as the username and password you use to log in to PayPal
- Advanced Billing sites in test mode will only work with the API credentials for a PayPal developer’s sandbox account (not a live PayPal gateway account)
- Advanced Billing sites in production mode will only work with the API credentials for a PayPal live account (not a developer’s sandbox account)
LESSONS FROM OTHER ADVANCED BILLING MERCHANTS
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The error message “Security Header is Invalid” indicates a mismatch between Live/Test in Advanced Billing and Live/Sandbox in PayPal. If it’s REALLY not that problem, then you need to contact PayPal and complain. Usually, things start working again within 24 hours, even though they will tell you that nothing was wrong on their end.
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The error message “Credit Card is Invalid” can be very misleading. We get this message when the real problem is that we have used the wrong API credentials or we have a mismatch between Advanced Billing and PayPal Live/Test modes.
DATA PORTABILITY POLICY
As of the time of this publication, PayPal Website Payments Pro (Payflow) allows exporting to another Level 1 PCI compliant entity. For up to the minute portablity information, please contact PayPal directly.