Recurring Payments with Payflow Pro - Invalid transaction type

Question

I have set up a website that uses the PayPal Payflow API to process payment transactions using a live Payments Pro account that has the Recurring Payment service. It works by first requesting a secure token and then committing the transaction. I have this working using both Hosted Pages (layout c) and Transparent Redirect. I'm using the Payflow_dotNet dll which uses the payflowpro.paypal.com URL. However, when I try to submit a transaction to set up a Recurring Payment by setting the transaction type to "R" I get the following error

"result 3 - Invalid transaction type for secure token creation request"

Here is a sample of the NVP string I'm using:

PARTNER[6]=PayPal&VENDOR[13]=me&USER[6]=username&PWD[8]=password&
TRXTYPE=R&ACTION=A&INVNUM=243&PROFILEREFERENCE=243&PROFILENAME[35]=Mark Groseth -- Science Center Fund&
START=09092014&TERM=0&PAYPERIOD=MONT&AMT[4]=1.01&CURRENCY[3]=USD&
CREATESECURETOKEN=Y&SECURETOKENID[32]=05831a20674941089f68d53b7184efff&TENDER=C&
SILENTTRAN=TRUE&RETURNURL[51]=myurl&CANCELURL[42]=myurl&ERRORURL[51]=myurl&URLMETHOD=POST&
BILLTOFIRSTNAME[4]=Mark&BILLTOLASTNAME[7]=Groseth&BILLTOSTREET[20]=1234 Somewhere st 55&BILLTOCITY[7]=Houston&BILLTOSTATE[2]=TX&BILLTOZIP[5]=77018&BILLTOEMAIL[13][email protected]&BILLTOCOUNTRY[2]=US&
FIRSTNAME[4]=Mark&LASTNAME[7]=Groseth&STREET[20]=1234 Somewhere st 55&CITY[7]=Houston&STATE[2]=TX&ZIP[5]=77018&EMAIL[13][email protected]&
COMMENT1[19]=Science Center Fund&L_NAME0[19]=Science Center Fund&L_DESC0[19]=Science Center Fund&L_COST0[4]=1.01&L_QTY0=1&ITEMAMT[4]=1.01

Why doesn't this work?

Am I going to have to create an Authorization transaction and then convert it to a recurring payment profile somehow?

Eshan Eshan · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-10T00:41:33

With the PayPal Hosted Checkout Pages the only allowed values for TRXTYPE are "A" or "S" . You cannot use the TRXTYPE=R .

If you have Payflow Pro account then you can directly create the recurring profiles using the recurring Billing API's where you will pass all the credit card info and profile details .

But if you are looking to use the Recurring Billing via the PayPal hosted checkout pages then you should first perform a transaction using the Checkout page and then use the Transaction id( PNREF) to create the recurring Profile. You can refer the below link for more info :

https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/en_US/developer/docs/pdf/pp_payflowpro_recurringbilling_guide.pdf

Recurring Payments with Payflow Pro - Invalid transaction type

1 Answers