SIOD suggests getting a separate bank account and PayPal account to use ONLY for your on-line sales. This will allow you to easily reconcile your e-commerce sales to your PayPal account. If your e-commerce report shows you sold x amount of dollars this month your PayPal account should reflect the same amount. If you make purchases using the same PayPal account it makes reconciling more challenging. That’s our suggestion. It’s your call though.
What’s the difference between PayPal Standard, Express, and Pro?
PayPal Website Payments Standard takes the customer to PayPal’s site AFTER the ENTIRE checkout in order to make payment. The customer can pay without having a PayPal account (depending on what country YOU are in … PayPal limits that feature for some countries). After the payment is completed, your store is notified of the completed payment, after which time the order is stored in your database. If the customer pays without making a PayPal account and closes their browser when presented with the invitation to make one, your store sits in limbo and never gets the order (due to a bug in PayPal’s logic, which they’ve not fixed yet). If they DO have OR make a PayPal account, you get the notification and the order is stored in your database.
**IF there is any problem in PayPal’s ability to communicate to your server, you will never see the order in your store (or receive the confirmation email from your store), because it relies entirely on PayPal’s server being able to talk to your server in order to store the order.
PayPal sees Website Payments Standard as a solution for merchants wanting to collect payments on their site easily, especially if they have no other payment method available.
SIOD will need the following information in order to configure PayPal Website Payments Standard: Display Name (Your online store name), PayPal Username and PayPal URL. Contact PayPal customer support if you have any questions regarding acquiring this information.
PayPal Express Checkout gives the customer two options: They can jump over to the PayPal site to login to their account BEFORE completing checkout on your store (which allows them to select their address information there and never have to re-type their address details on YOUR site, thus the “express” part of the transaction) and then choosing shipping choices and discounts/coupons etc before completing the order ……. OR they can go to the PayPal site to login to their account AFTER making shipping/payment/coupon selections on your site (and creating an account on your store and typing their address info on your store), much like they do with Standard. With Express, they may be required to have/create a PayPal account before they can provide payment details (with some exceptions based on geographic differences, although most customers should be able to pay without a PayPal account if you have your account configured properly. However, Express does not rely entirely on the IPN communications to your store in order to release the order. Instead, it stores the order immediately when payment is completed. It doesn’t have to rely on the PayPal server to talk to your server in order to store the order. Instead, you will receive an email informing you of the order. Granted, you will want PayPal’s server to be able to send IPN updates to you for any orders, in case you do refunds or adjustments to the order… so that those updates are reflected in your store’s order history.
PayPal sees Express Checkout as a payment option that’s offered in addition to other payment choices such as a credit card gateway, and that adding Express is a way to allow PayPal members a very quick and easy way to pay using their PayPal account. Many merchants do use Express Checkout as their sole payment processing option, even without a credit card gateway.
SIOD will need the following information in order to configure PayPal Express Checkout: Display Name (Your online store name), PayPal API Username, PayPal API Password and PayPal API Signature. Contact PayPal customer support if you have any questions regarding acquiring this information.
Website Payments Pro appears to the customer only as a couple fields to enter their credit card number directly on your website. They have no idea that in the background you’re processing their card via PayPal. They have to make an account on your site, and supply the address details, but once they confirm the order, the payment is collected immediately and the order saved. It doesn’t rely on IPN to release the order. However, it does store any transaction updates done on the PayPal end such as refunds etc as long as IPNs can be received by your server. Website Payments Pro is currently only offered in the USA, UK, and Canada. A monthly service charge applies, and there is an account application process and credit check to complete before the feature can be activated on your account. PayPal Express Checkout must be enabled in order for Website Payments Pro to be offered on your site.
PayPal sees Website Payments Pro as a payment gateway for handling credit cards. That’s exactly what it is. Coupled with Express Checkout, it gives your customers the maximum amount of choice about how to pay: either by credit card directly on your site, or by using their PayPal account to submit payment.
SIOD will need the following information in order to configure PayPal Website Payments Pro: Display Name (Your online store name), PayPal API Username, PayPal API Password and PayPal API Signature. Contact PayPal customer support if you have any questions regarding acquiring this information.
Payflow Pro is essentially *only* a merchant account. Transactions conducted via Payflow Pro (for US Merchants) do not appear in your PayPal account … instead, they are forwarded directly to your merchant bank account. Basically, Payflow Pro is just like any other traditional payment gateway (akin to Authorize.net etc). In North America you can connect the Payflow Pro service to your own merchant bank account. In the UK, the Payflow Pro service is actually bundled as a hybrid service with Website Payments Pro, connecting all the transactions to your UK PayPal account, and all monies are deposited to your PayPal account instead of directly to your bank account.
SIOD will need the following information in order to configure PayPal Payflow Pro: Display Name (Your online store name), PayPal Payflow Pro User, PayPal Payflow Pro Password and PayPal Payflow Pro Vendor. Contact PayPal customer support if you have any questions regarding acquiring this information.
More information about the various PayPal services can be found on the PayPal website.
