Merchants who use Website Payments Standard can use Payment Data Transfer (PDT) to display transaction details to buyers who are redirected back to the merchants’ websites after they complete their payments.
Step 1: Bob goes to the Widget Warehouse website, finds the widget he wants, and clicks the
Buy Now button.
Step 2: Bob is taken to a PayPal
Payment Details page which displays the details of the payment he is about to make.
Step 3: Bob enters his PayPal account information into the PayPal Login fields.
Step 4: Bob is then taken to a confirmation page that displays the details of his selection, information about how his automatic payments will be funded, and his shipping information. He clicks the
Pay button to complete the payment.
Step 5: A payment confirmation page appears that informs Bob that his payment has been completed and that he is being redirected back to the Widget Warehouse website.
Step 6: A transaction token is passed to the return URL provided by the Widget Warehouse. The Widget Warehouse fetches the transaction token and retrieves the transaction details from PayPal via an HTTP POST. Included in the HTTP post is the identity token that was given to the Widget Warehouse when PDT was enabled.
Step 7: The Widget Warehouse's Thank You page appears and displays the transaction information, again informing Bob that his transaction has been completed and a receipt for the purchase has been sent to him by email. The page also displays payment details, a link to PayPal that Bob can use to view more transaction details if necessary, as well as links that he can use to continue shopping.
For example, as shown in the following diagram: Thank you for your payment. Your transaction has been completed, and a receipt for your purchase has been emailed to you. You may log into your account at
www.paypal.com to view details of this transaction.
Step 8: Bob receives an email receipt for this transaction, confirming his purchase and including a copy of the payment details, the Widget Warehouse's business information, and his confirmed shipping address.
You can enable PDT from your account profile, and you can enable PDT when you use a button creation tool on the PayPal website to create payment buttons for Website Payments Standard.
When you click the Save button and save your PDT preferences, a message appears at the top of the page indicating that you have successfully saved your preferences. Your identity token also appears in this message.
For security, the identity token is not sent to you; however, once you have enabled PDT, it permanently appears below the Payment Data Transfer On/Off radio buttons on the
Website Payments Preferences page.
The PayPal Account Optional does not require your customers who are new to PayPal to create a PayPal account to complete a purchase—they go through an alternate checkout and have the option to sign up afterward. Customers who already have PayPal accounts will continue to enjoy the privileges of those accounts, such as payment history and integration with eBay Auctions, and their checkout experience will remain the same.
PayPal Account Optional is enabled by default. If the merchant has turned on Payment Data Transfer and has not disabled PayPal Account Optional, a new user will not be automatically directed back to the merchant website, but will be given the option to return. When the buyer clicks the
Continue button, the transaction ID associated with the transaction is sent. The merchant returns the transaction ID, along with their identity token, and PayPal then sends the merchant payment information that confirms that the payment is complete. The buyer is directed back to the merchant site where the transaction information is displayed. However, if the buyer does
not click the
Continue button, they will not be directed back to the merchant's site and PDT will not be initiated.
After you have activated PDT, every time a buyer makes a website payment and is redirected to your return URL, a transaction token is sent via a FORM GET variable to this return URL.
To properly use PDT and display transaction details to your customer, you should read the transaction token from the variable
tx and retrieve transaction details from PayPal by constructing an HTTPS POST to PayPal. This is called
notification synch or synchronization.
PayPal responds to the post with a single word on one line in the body of the response: SUCCESS or
FAIL. When you receive a
SUCCESS response, the rest of the body of the response is the transaction details, one per line, in the format
key=value where
key and
value are both be URL-encoded strings. This response data needs to be parsed appropriately and then URL-decoded.
With Auto Return, you must display a message on the page displayed by the Return URL that helps the buyer understand that the payment has been made, that the transaction has been completed, and that payment transaction details will be sent to the buyer by email. You can display to your customer whatever payment details you feel are appropriate; however, PayPal recommends including the following:
If you are using PDT to determine when to fulfill an order automatically, confirm that the payment_status is
Completed, since the buyer could use methods such as eChecks that do not immediately clear.
