PayPal Adaptive Payment - multiple currency issues

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I'm having a real headache with these damn Adaptive Payments for PayPal! So far, I've got it working - but now I'm trying to resolve some issues with it.

Why on earth don't they just let you request a payment in the sellers currency? I'm acting as a 3rd party system for people- so they list on my site, and then the buyer purchases from our site - but the money gets sent direct to them (via our account, with Adaptive payments - so we can do IPN requests). The problem here, is that not everyone will use the same currency.

To get around this, I've been using the ConvertCurrency feature ( https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/adaptive-payments/ConvertCurrency_API_Operation/ ). This works OK - as I can then give the prices to the buyer in their desired currency.

However, when I then send to paypal to make the payment - it requires multiple payments (at once) to be done in just 1 currency. So for example, I have:

  1. Seller 1- $50 US

  2. Seller 2- 10 EUR

I convert those into GBP, which gives me say £30 and £8 - so a total of £38. This payment goes through, but the problem arises when the IPN gets run. If the person receiving the funds hasn't already setup the account to accept in that currency, the get a message about "accepting" the funds, as seen here:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/mc/mc_receive-outside

Until they have decided on what to do there, I can't do squat with the payment - as it comes back with the status:

'transaction[0].pending_reason' => 'MULTI_CURRENCY',

I know for a fact the buyers are not going to like having to wait for a confirmation of their order. Why can't I just get it to accept in that currency, and convert automatically into their primary currency?

The other bad thing about this, is that I doubt the seller is going to be the amount they expect. PayPal are going to take their commission when doing the conversion 1 way, and then again when the person receiving it goes to convert it into their own currency.

How does eBay, etsy and other large sites that offer multiple purchases handle this? Its driving me up the wall!

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paypalpaypal-adaptive-payments
Anyone? At the moment, its looking like I'm just gonna have to do a crappy solution, which is to make them pay one person at a time (multiple items are ok, but only on a per-person basis)... then I would have to make them pay in the sellers currency, which wouldn't be ideal either. Someone must have a suggestion? – Andrew Newby

1 Answers

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Ok, well its not really a "solution", but its the route I'm going to have to go down - as I can't see any other option.

Now, I'm storing the converted amounts into my DB, and then showing those to the buyers (these numbers are updated via a cron, 2 times a day).

The buyer then gets shown the prices in their own currency, but when they go to paypal it actually asks for the money in the sellers currency. This means that the artist will always have the correct incoming currency, and I will not get that annoying issue.

If all goes to plan, the price the buyer see's on our site, should be the same as the amount they get charged,as I'm using the ConvertCurrency API to convert the amounts into the most up to date prices.

Hopefully this helps someone else, if they come across this post.