Paypal credit card refund failing when currency is set to GBP

Question

I've implemented the PayPal credit card payment xml api, using the WSDLs they provided. Everything appears to work great if the currency is USD. My initial transactions are approved and my refunds both partial and full succeed as well. However, I have issues when I switch from USD to GBP. The GBP credit card authorization request succeeds but when I try to perform a refund I get back an error code of 10009 "You cannot refund this type of transaction". The same code is being executed for USD and GBP the only difference between the requests is the currency code being set on the amount and I'm at a loss to why USD refund requests succeed for USD payments but GBP refunds fail for GBP payments. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

If you log into your PayPal merchant account (or sandbox) you will probably find that the original Payment has not been accepted. This happens if your account does not yet hold any funds in the currency of the Payment.

At least, this is what was happening to me.

Once the payment has been accepted it should refund fine. And if you accept it by creating a balance in GBP, then any future payments will be accepted automatically.