Paypal Standard Payments & IPN

[widgetuk]

Hi all,

I'm soon to launch my new Boss Cart JV store. Whilst finalising everything, I realised that my tests to accept Paypal (using the Paypal Sandbox environment) have been successful in accepting credit card payments from non-Paypal users (Paypal Payments Standard). It works quite well

BUT, I realised in my Paypal settings that IPN (Instant Payment Notification) was disabled. From what I understand, IPN is a Palpal secrurity feature. It tries to prevent fake payment amounts by naughty little people who would attempt to change Cart button submit amounts etc. which are not encrypted.

So, I enabled IPN in my Paypal environment. BUT, then it asks me to enter my URL for the server to receive the IPN notifications. I'm not sure what this should be set to? Anyone any ideas?

Cheers, Jon.

[widgetuk]

So, I managed to find the URL that needs to be placed in the Paypal IPN settings (in the Paypal profile pages).

It's www.yourdomain.co.uk/administrator/components/com_virtuemart/notify.php

I've added this to my sanbox paypal site config, but, I dont know if it's really working.

The strange thing is, if I don't have IPN activated in my Paypal profile, then when a user clicks to "confirm order" from my cart, it takes them straight to the credit card details page of the Paypal Standard Payments screen. This enables people who dont have paypal to pay me via credit/debit card

BUT, when i have IPN activated, and the user clicks to "confirm order", they go to the annoying Paypal screen whereby the main screen is taken up the Paypal username/password login details, and there's a tiny little link for people without Paypal accounts to click, and then they finally see the credit card details page. Not good. This would no doubt put off customers who dont see the little link, and therefore assume they need a paypal account, dont want one, and so exit the cart before paying.

So, i suspect this is because the IPN isnt working properly, but I dont really know?

Anyone else seen this problem?

[widgetuk]

Anyone reading this in the same position as I was might be interested to note that Bagi is to fix the config on the paypal module to provide a slightly improvement user experience. Which I've tested and works great and IPN works a treat

The only issue that remains is a Paypal one. When a brand new user clicks to "confirm now" on your shopping cart, if paypal has never seen that email address before it takes them to the credit cart input page... which is really smooth and straight forward for the customer. HOWEVER, I believe Paypal then logs their email address, even if they choose not to set up a paypal account! So, the next time they purchase, instead of paypal taking them to the credit card input page, they're email is recognised, and they're presented with the paypal LOGIN page! Which is bad, because my site says "you dont need a paypal account, you can pay directly by credit card etc". To be able to by pass the Paypal login, and just make a credit card payment, they have to be hawk-eyed and spot the little "continue" link on the left, which then presents them with the Credit Card input page.

Sneaky little Paypal !!

Guess there's nothing we can do about that. Other than hope my websales increase enough to be able to afford to use a proper payment gateway, which costs about £20/month I believe for something like Paypal Payment Pro, or the Nochex equiv' etc.

Anyway, enjoy! Cheers, Jon

[Bagi Zoltán]

Jon, with your help but we can called them help requests JV script become more stable and much better for shopkeeper and for the customers as well. Thank you very much for your patience.
Cheers!