Marketplace using Paypal

3
votes

Hi we are creating a mobile app for marketplace where we are hoping to get eBay model implemented. Where buyer will pay the seller and we will take our cut from the seller. We actually don't want to get payment ourself for the sale and handle the disputes for order shipping or chargebacks.

When a sale is done on our app, the buyer should send the payment to the sellers paypal and then Paypal will handle all the other stuff regarding that like disputes or chargebacks.

I want seller to link his paypal account to our app and we will take permissions for future payments and maintain a record where we can calculate his fee regarding sales made on our platform. Paypal Mobile SDK support this feature.

But my question here is how can we automate the original purchase process? One option is when a sale is done, we will send invoice from seller side to the buyer (possible using Paypal REST API) and open invoice pay link on the buyer side. Once the buyer pay the invoice and transfer the funds to the seller we will know that sale is approved successfully because as a Paypal facilitator we have access to that invoice (we actually sent that invoice to the buyer as we have permissions of invoicing of seller account).

But what if we don't want invoicing system? Can we implement anything where buyer will send the funds to the seller without generating an invoice from our app. Like when a sale initiated, we will present buyer a page where he will pay directly to the seller (without us involved) and we will track that transaction and make outstanding cut on that sale?

My Research so far

  • Payapl mobile SDK for iOS don't allow us to take permissions for invoicing, we can take single, future or profile sharing permissions in app
  • Paypal Rest API allow us to take permissions for invoicing but not for future payments (that is necessary to take our cut from the seller's account)
  • If we use Paypal Mobile SDK, we can take funds in our account but not directly to our sellers account
  • Adaptive payments is an option where can take funds from buyers and after deducting our cut send the rest to the buyer but in that case we will be primary recipient and seller will be secondary, being a primary recipient we are responsible for shipping the product which at this stage we don't want. Want want to be seller as primary recipient

Any help regarding our situation would be greatly appreciated. We just want to automate the system somehow with the APIs and SDKs without being the primary recipient. Please give us suggestion to make this a reality. Thanks

Using any other payment gateway like Stripe or Braintree will not help here because in that case we will be taking money as registered merchants. We would really like to work with Paypal for handling all order related stuff

1
phpiosrestpaypal

1 Answers

2
votes

The Express Checkout API supports Parallel Payments, in which case you specify the SELLERPAYPALACCOUNTID in the request. This is where the money for that particular payment would be sent.

You can use this functionality even with a single payment on the order, though. So you can just setup a single payment and include that SELLERPAYPALACCOUNTID parameter, and the money will go directly to that account.

When doing this you can use your own API credentials and no permissions or anything are required from the 3rd party account to send the funds directly to them.

This PayPal PHP SDK will make the Express Checkout API calls very quick and easy for you, so you could just setup some simple PHP services to hit from your mobile app(s).