I am developing an IPN application for a non-profit who wants to take monthly recurring pledges. The IPN variables manual has two separate entries: subscription & recurring and it appears recurring is what I need and so I would use the txn_type=recurring_payment. The problem is that when I turn to the "HTML Variables for PayPal Payments Standard" manual, I can't find an appropriate _xclick value for recurring payments. Yes there is one for subscriptions but nothing for _xclick. How then do I code for recurring payments in the HTML? Or is recurring payments not available to HTML Standard Payments?
2 Answers
While technically they are the same thing, PayPal Standard (ie. basic payment buttons) calls it "Subscriptions" where-as the APIs call it "Recurring Payments".
If you want to stick with Payments Standard you would just use the IPN Subscription variables in your IPN code logic. If you do switch to Express Checkout then that's when you would use the Recurring Payments IPN params.
I would recommend using Express Checkout w/ Recurring Payments if you can. This would require some more in depth coding. Assuming you're comfortable with PHP, this PHP PayPal SDK would make the Express Checkout and Recurring Payments API calls very quick and easy for you.
The recurring-payment feature you are referring to is an API based product. If you are using PayPal Payments Standard, the subscription variables are your only option.
You can use Recurring Payments with Express Checkout. Here is a link to the developer documentation:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/express-checkout/ht_ec-recurringPaymentProfile-curl-etc/