Configuring PayPal

PayPal is one of the most popular on-line payment systems. It allows for money transfers between bank accounts, which are identified by e-mail addresses. Each account is linked to one or more credit cards, e.g. a VISA card, with on-line payment enabled.

While using the Kentico PayPal payment gateway, your on-line store customers can make payment in the following currencies:

  • United States Dollar (USD)
  • Euro (EUR)
  • Pound Sterling (GBP)
  • Canadian Dollar (CAD)
  • Japanese Yen (JPY)
  • Australian Dollar (AUD)

What you need

  • Kentico with built-in PayPal support.
  • PayPal account - See PayPal website for more details.

How it works

Interaction between your website and PayPal

Configuring PayPal in Kentico

Before your customers can start using the PayPal payment gateway, you need to perform the following configuration:

  1. Open the Settings application.

  2. Select E-commerce -> Payment Gateways -> PayPal from the settings tree.

  3. Specify the Business setting to identify your payments.

    • Business - e-mail address for the merchant’s PayPal account.
  4. (Optional) Specify other PayPal gateway settings.

    • Cancel return URL - the URL to which the buyer’s browser is redirected if the payment is cancelled; e.g. a URL on your website that displays your custom Payment canceled page. By default, the browser is redirected to a PayPal page.
    • Notify URL - the URL to which PayPal posts information about the transaction; see PayPal IPN for more details. If specified, overrides the settings in the PayPal merchant’s interface.
    • Return URL - the URL to which the buyer’s browser is redirected if the payment is completed; e.g. a URL on your website that displays your custom Thank you for your payment page. By default, the browser is redirected to a PayPal page. Note that Return URL values that you send to PayPal can be easily manipulated. This is because these values are visible in query strings. To prevent from this issue, we recommend that you use PayPal IPN.
  5. Ensure that the PayPal payment method is registered and enabled.

  6. Check the PayPal payment gateway settings in Store configuration -> Payment methods.

    • Payment gateway URL: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr

    • Payment gateway provider class

      • Assembly name: CMS.EcommerceProvider
      • Class: CMS.EcommerceProvider.CMSPayPalProvider

If you want your transactions to be processed as test transactions, use https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr as your payment gateway URL and sign up for the PayPal SandBox testing environment. See the PayPal website for more details.

The price is rounded to two decimal places. Otherwise, the PayPal payment gateway does not allow the payment.

IPN - Instant Payment Notification

Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is a message service that notifies you about events related to payments processed through PayPal. It is a web-based callback mechanism that calls a pre-configured URL on your site. For the service to be functional, IPN must be enabled on the PayPal side.

After processing the order, PayPal sends a confirmation to your pre-configured URL. PayPal then expects a reply from you within a short period of time (a few minutes), and returns a response to confirm that the customer paid.

IPN is optional, but it is a requirement if you need to immediately confirm payments for orders to your customers.

Checkout process

If your customers use the PayPal payment method, they needn’t fill any additional information in the appropriate step (usually the Payment step) of the checkout process. After clicking the corresponding button, the system redirects them to the PayPal payment gateway to finish payment.

Using PayPal - checkout process