PayPal Payments Pro Integration Guide April 2012 11
Introducing PayPal Payments Pro
Additional Features of PayPal Payments Pro
1
Settlements and Captured Payments
Often, you accept a payment and ship goods immediately, which is refered to as sale. In
addition to immediate payments, Direct Payment and Express Checkout both allow you to
authorize payments to be captured later, which is referred to as an authorization. An
authorization is useful, for example, when you want to reserve a buyer’s funds pending the
shipment of goods; the actual payment is captured when the goods are shipped. An
authorization can be reauthorized one time if necessary; for example, when you are unable to
ship within 3 days of the authorization.
Express Checkout provides an additional option, called an order, which you use when a single
authorization is insufficient. You can create multiple authorizations and capture them as part
of the same order. This would be useful, for example, when an order is split into multiple
shipments and you need to capture a payment each time part of the order is shipped.
Recurring Payments
You can support recurring payments to manage subscriptions and other payments on a fixed
schedule. Direct Payment and Express Checkout both process recurring payments.
When you support recurring payments for a buyer, you create a recurring payments profile.
The profile contains information about the recurring payments, including details for an
optional trial period and a regular payment period. Both periods contain information about the
payment frequency and payment amounts, including shipping and tax, if applicable.
After creating a profile, PayPal automatically queues payments based on the billing start date,
billing frequency, and billing amount. Payments reoccur until the profile expires, there are too
many failed payments to continue, or you cancel the profile.
Permission to allow recurring payments is established by the buyer setting up a billing
agreement with the merchant on PayPal. For Express Checkout, the billing agreement can be
established either in advance or when the buyer first makes a purchase; in either case, it occurs
when you call Express Checkout API operations. For direct payment, it occurs when you make
an explicit call to set up the billing agreement.
Recurring payments using reference transactions is an alternative, which enables you to handle
payments for varying amounts of money on a varying schedule. A reference transaction is a
financial transaction from which subsequent transactions can be derived; for example, a buyer
can make a purchase on your site and the PayPal transaction ID, called a reference transaction
ID, can later be used to initiate another transaction.
NOTE: The use of recurring payments with direct payment may incur additional fees.
Virtual Terminal
PayPal’s Virtual Terminal is a web-based application that allows you to accept credit card
payments. It is available to merchants in the United States, Canada, France, and the United
Kingdom. Virtual Terminal provides your business with the functionality similar to a stand-
alone credit card-processing terminal. Virtual Terminal is ideal when you receive orders by