PayPal: How do you get notifications of payment through the permissions API?

Question

Using the PayPal permissions API can you receive notifications from payments made after a customer clicks on a payment button, proceeds to PayPal, and then pays?

I notice they have IPN, but will this work with the permissions API?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can include NotifyURL in your API requests to set a URL for IPN to POST data to. It's not something that technically "works with the permissions API" but any transaction that is made would indeed trigger the IPN.

If you're building an app for 3rd parties to use, though, and you're passing NotifyURL in your API requests, that will override any IPN configuration each individual merchant using your tool might have setup on their own. This can cause frustration for such users because then their own IPN solution doesn't get hit when they take payments through your app.

If you're going to do that I recommend setting up a way for your users to enter their own IPN URL in your app settings, and then if they have a value, forward the POSTed data to their URL when PayPal sends it to yours. That way both IPN scripts will get hit and process the data accordingly.