With the PayPal Professional integration, your end users can seamlessly process their credit card transactions right on your Form. Once the transactions have been processed you can collect these funds in your PayPal Pro account.
Note: PayPal Pro merchants located in the UK will need to take steps to continue to successfully take payments from their customers located in the EEA. Review the PSD2 Guide for information.
Connect PayPal Integration
To integrate your Form with PayPal Pro, go into the Form and click on Settings > Integrations > Payments > PayPal Payments Pro > and click "Add" next to the integration. A PayPal Pro tab should appear below the Integrations Hub tab. Click on this to complete your setup of the PayPal Pro integration.
First, you will need your API Username, API Password and Signature for your PayPal Pro account in order to set up the integration. This is not the same as the username and password for your PayPal Standard account.
To find your API info, log into your PayPal account, click the Tools tab and navigate to Manage your business > API Access." (If you are using the Classic PayPal user interface, navigate to My Account > Profile > My Selling Tools, then click the Update (API Access) link). Click Request API Credentials on the API Access page, then select Request API signature and click Agree And Submit to generate a set of Signature credentials.
Once you have this data you will want to enter the API username, API password, and your PayPal Signature and then choose whether you want the integration in Production or Test mode.
Note: All settings are on auto-save meaning your entries will automatically save to the integration as you add them.
If you have a form that is already using Paypal Pro credentials you can easily transfer them to your new form using our Credential importer.
API Certificates last for 10 years and will eventually need to be renewed. To do this, log into your Paypal account and navigate to the Manage API Certificate page. (To do so, select My Account > Profile > My Selling Tools, click the Update (API Access) link, then click View API Certificate.) On the Manage API Certificate page, check the status of your API Certificate, whether it is Active or About to expire. If the status of your certificate is About to expire, click the Renew certificate button.
An additional certificate is generated and given an Active status. Both the new and old certificates appear on the Manage API Certificate page. For more information see Paypal's support doc on Renewing API Certificates.
First, you will start with the Transaction Information. If you have multiple items on your Form then you can map these to the integration by clicking on the Multiple Items option.
However, you may instead choose to calculate a single total on the form and pass that value to PayPal as the Price field, leaving the Quantity field blank. Either method for multiple items will work.
When mapping the Payment Information, it is important to note that your Form must have a credit card field in addition to at least one price field. These can be mapped to the PayPal integration by selecting "Credit Card" from the various drop-down menus.
As an optional setting, you may choose to map Customer Information including name, contact information, and address from the Form and send this to PayPal along with the payment transaction.
PayPal Pro Subscriptions
When integrating with PayPal Pro, you also have the option of setting up recurring subscriptions/payments. You choose the fields for the "Recurring Amount", which is the amount the user will be billed, and "Billing Cycle" which is how often they will the frequency of their billing (weekly, monthly, etc.). You can also set how many times you want them to be re-billed (infinite is selected by default).
Submit Action
A Submit Action Action will automatically be created to "Submit to PayPal Pro." when a user submits their Form. You may choose to add Routing Logic which acts as a filter and will only send certain users to PayPal based on their answers. For example, if your Form offer options to pay via Credit Card OR Check then you would want to add Routing Logic so that only submissions paying via credit card are processed through PayPal.
To access this setting, go into the Form > Settings > Emails & Actions > Advanced Settings > click the 'Logic' button next to the PayPal Submit action to add your Routing Logic.
Test PayPal Pro
There are two servers you can use with PayPal Pro, the Production server or the Test server. The Production server is the server most people will use and the one that must be used when your form is live and you want to process transactions. The Test server is for those who have a PayPal Sandbox account and want to use that account to test their form before going live with it. You cannot use the Test server with a normal PayPal Pro account, you must have a sandbox account.
Troubleshooting
1. My transactions are not processing to PayPal.
Be sure the integration is in the ON position. To check this, go into the Form > Settings > click on the PayPal integration and confirm that the integration is toggled ON in the upper-right corner of the page. Also, make sure all required fields between the Form and integration are mapped and your PayPal credentials are entered correctly on the integration.
2. Error: Error processing payment: This transaction cannot be processed due to an invalid merchant configuration.
This error means that you have enrolled in PayPal Website Payments Pro but have not accepted the billing agreement. To fix this you need to Login to PayPal > Click on Products and services > Click on Website Payments Pro > Click on Submit billing agreement> Follow the steps on the page to complete the process.
3. ERROR: Error processing payment: Security header is not valid
This error can mean your account is not properly configured to process express checkout and/or PayPal Payments Pro transactions. Please make sure you have the correct PayPal Pro account credentials by following the steps outlined in the docs above.
If you are sure your API info is correct, try deleting your current PayPal Pro API credentials and entering new ones. To delete your API info, log into your PayPal Pro account, click on Profile > API Access > View API Certificate, and then click the Remove button. After that, generate new API credentials as explained earlier in this support document.
4. ERROR: DPRP Is Disabled For This Merchant / Invalid Merchant Configuration
If you are attempting to test Direct Payment Recurring Payments within the sandbox and your sandbox account has not been enabled for DPRP, you will be shown the message 'DPRP Is Disabled For This Merchant'. You would need to contact PayPal to correct this.
For all of our integrations, we just pass on the error message sent to us from the product we are integrating with. These error messages are not generated by Formstack, so we may not even know what many of them mean. However, you can click here for the full list of PayPal API error messages and their meanings.
Have any further questions? We’re here to help! Please reach out to support@formstack.com for additional assistance with your use case.