How to do PayPal/Google Checkout in an Auction style web application?

Question

I'm curious if there is a way to process/connect buyers and sellers on my site without the site having to charge the buyer and credit the seller. In other words, I don't want to touch the money, but I do want to integrate the process as much as possible on my site.

I guess what I'm asking is how do auction sites manage the transactions between buyer and seller? I really don't want my site to resort to emailing the buyer with the seller's contact information and saying .... "here's the sellers info. Good luck with that."

Ebay seems to allow a buyer to go to PayPal and pay the seller, but returns back to Ebay with payment confirmation. Even though the transaction is between Buyer and Seller, Ebay is able to retrieve some details about that transaction. Is this simply because Ebay owns PayPal, or can other sites do the same?

Answer 1

-This is an old question but the information is a bit off so I will try to re-answer.

It is all doable. There is no custom code going on like codingspace is suggesting.

Paypal has a number of checkout types, I have some decent experience with express checkout so I will try to answer with an example of those calls.

You set up the payment with a SetExpressCheckout call using your call back uri (so you see if the customer confirms) and the sellers info in the request (you will need appropriate information from the seller).

With that, once they confirm you can bill them with DoExpressCheckoutPayment using the sellers and info and the returned information from SetExpressCheckout.

And that is effectively the process. Pretty simple really.

In terms of taking a commission, you can't do it via that specific transaction. What most mass retailers do is keep a record of all the commissions and bill the seller at the end of the month. The other option is forcing sellers to buy prepay credit which is then used on commisions of each sale, this is what trademe.co.nz does (NZ's ebay.)

Let me know any questions.

Answer 2

I'm guessing you don't want to take a commission off of each sale on your site then. The only thing that comes to mind is to have the seller provide their own paypal "buy now" button after the sale that you can then give to the buyer.