PayPal Billing Agreements

[Seb]

Hey guys

We're about to put PayPal billing agreement functionality live. This allows you to automatically charge client PayPal accounts for payments (just like charging a card on file)

To support it you need to have reference transactions enabled on your PayPal account. 

As that takes a couple of days to do, if you want to offer this please raise a request with PayPal so you are ready for this feature 🙂

 

[Seb]

This is now live.

When you ask PayPal to enable reference transactions, they'll come back with a response like

 

Reference Transactions allow you to recharge a customer’s credit card after an initial transaction has been completed. You will not need to input your customer’s credit card information to process a sale.
When a buyer purchases an item on your site, a reference transaction ID is generated. You can use the reference transaction ID later to initiate subsequent transactions. As a merchant, you can use a reference transaction ID to capture future payments against a billing agreement. The capture future payment transaction is a reference transaction.
As Reference Transactions carry a higher risk than other products, please send an email to [email protected] with the following information so that we can submit an application for Reference Transactions on your behalf.
 
Business information:
Business name
Business URL
Current/anticipated monthly sales via PayPal only (based on the last 3 months)
Number of repeat customers (past 3 months)
Integration information:
Please describe what you intend to use Reference Transaction for.
Do you or your buyers need to initiate each subsequent payment themselves or are they processed automatically after the billing agreement is created?
Will this service be enabled within your website, mobile app integration, or both?
Are you integrating through another payment service provider, such as Worldpay or Ingenico?
Do you require the Reference Transactions product for use with your Shopping Cart to offer Subscriptions? (For example Woo-Commerce, Charge-Bee.)
Once we confirm receipt of the above information, your application may take up to 3 days to be assessed. Please be aware that we may require more information once your application is processed.
If you offer monthly subscriptions, you can activate the feature yourself by downloading the subscription button. For more information go to: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/subscriptions/#how-a-subscriptions-integration-works. 
If you cannot use a subscription, please specify why.
Thank you for contacting PayPal and for being a valued customer. If you have no further questions, you may close the conversation by selecting End Message. If you respond to this message, a member of our team will follow up with you.

You need to provide answers to these. Template answers as follows (obviously adjust so it is accurate for your business)

Integration information:
Please describe what you intend to use Reference Transaction for.

Repeat billing of customers who have ongoing relationships with us. These customers pay us irregularly and the amount can vary from time to time. 

Do you or your buyers need to initiate each subsequent payment themselves or are they processed automatically after the billing agreement is created?

Both are possible. The billing agreement can be automatically charged when a service comes up for renewal and an invoice is generated, or the customer can choose to manually pay an invoice or place an order, with the billing agreement as a stored payment method.

Will this service be enabled within your website, mobile app integration, or both?

Within our website client area

Are you integrating through another payment service provider, such as Worldpay or Ingenico?

No, we are integrating directly with PayPal.

Do you require the Reference Transactions product for use with your Shopping Cart to offer Subscriptions? (For example Woo-Commerce, Charge-Bee.)

Yes, we use Upmind.com as our ecommerce software.

 

[Luis]

Great news!

Does the “PayPal billing agreements”  gateway replace the current PayPal express gateway? 

I mean, if you got the new gateway configured, is it still necessary to have the other one for manual payments?

[Seb]

Up to you. I would personally just keep billing agreements, but you could in theory have both and call one PayPal Automated Payments, and the other 'PayPal one-off'

We'll be releasing traditional PayPal subscriptions soon also, though that comes with problems as it's a 'push' payment.

[Luis]

On 3/30/2023 at 11:25 AM, Seb said:

Up to you. I would personally just keep billing agreements, but you could in theory have both and call one PayPal Automated Payments, and the other 'PayPal one-off'

We'll be releasing traditional PayPal subscriptions soon also, though that comes with problems as it's a 'push' payment.

Hi Seb, I see what you mean.

I was doing some tests with the PayPal Billing Agreement gateway and it appears that it works just like PayPal Express when you don't have Reference Transactions enabled.

So I will try to use it instead of the PayPal Express and work with PayPal to enable Reference Transactions in a not so distant future (it's not that easy).

[Seb]

PayPal Legacy Subscriptions is also now supported for callbacks.