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PayPal is a digital wallet that enables buyers to pay using their PayPal balance, bank accounts, or cards. It provides a trusted payment experience with buyer protection and is widely recognized by consumers worldwide.

Setup

Follow the PayPal setup instructions before configuring PayPal payments.

Vaulting

To allow customers to tokenize their PayPal account for future payments, you need to contact PayPal and request that your account be enabled for Vault. Once Vault has been enabled on your PayPal merchant account, you can toggle the tokenization feature on within the PayPal connector settings in the dashboard.
PayPal Payment Tokenization Toggle

Ingest billing and shipping details

By default, billing, and shipping details received from PayPal are not imported. To enable this feature, head over to ConnectionsConfigured and select your PayPal connector. Next, go to Credentials and toggle Import billing details and/or Import shipping details. When Import billing details is enabled, any of the user’s name, email address, and billing address are automatically imported into your transaction, merging it with any data already present on the transaction. Linked buyers are not updated, but only the snapshot of the buyer on the transaction. When Import shipping details is enabled, the user’s shipping address is automatically requested and imported into your transaction, merging it with any data already present on the transaction. Linked buyers are not updated, but only the snapshot of the buyer on the transaction.
The ingestion of billing and shipping details is not available for tokenized payments.

Payment receiving preferences

By default, PayPal only settles payments automatically if the payment is in the primary currency of the PayPal merchant account. If you need to accept payments in additional currencies, you need to open a PayPal account balance in each of the currencies you intend to accept. Alternatively, you can configure your PayPal merchant account to automatically convert payments into the primary currency. If you receive a payment in a currency that your PayPal merchant account is not configured to accept, the payment enters a pending state and you need to log in to the PayPal merchant dashboard to trigger settlement, either by opening the required currency balance, or converting the payment into the primary currency of your PayPal account.
Payments left in a pending state are eventually reversed by PayPal.

FraudNet

FraudNet is a PayPal-developed JavaScript library that collects browser-based data to help reduce fraud. Upon checkout, the FraudNet library sends data elements to PayPal Risk Services for fraud and risk assessment. When creating transactions, the PayPal FraudNet library must be included on the checkout page for all transactions. When using Embed, the PayPal FraudNet library is included automatically. If you are using the API directly, you need to use the device fingerprinting library which includes the PayPal FraudNet library.

Features

PayPal supports the following features:
  • Payment method tokenization - Store PayPal accounts for recurring or future transactions
  • Delayed capture - Authorize a payment and capture it at a later time (up to 3 days for PayPal, 29 days with Vault)
  • Over capture - Capture up to 115% of the authorized amount or authorized amount + $75 USD (whichever is less)
  • Partial capture - Capture a portion of the authorized amount
  • Refunds - Refund transactions in full or in part (up to 180 days)
  • Partial refunds - Issue multiple partial refunds up to the captured amount
  • Void - Cancel an authorized transaction before capture
  • Deep linking - Direct integration with PayPal mobile app using deep links
  • Transaction sync - Automatic synchronization of transaction status updates
  • Settlement reporting - Detailed settlement reports via SFTP
  • Webhook integration - Real-time notifications for payment events

Supported countries

PayPal supports transactions from buyers in the following countries:
Country codeCountry codeCountry codeCountry codeCountry codeCountry codeCountry codeCountry code
ADAEAGAIALAMAOAR
ATAUAWAZBABBBEBF
BGBHBIBJBMBNBOBR
BSBTBWBYBZCACDCG
CHCICKCLCMCNCOCR
CVCYCZDEDJDKDMDO
DZECEEEGERESETFI
FJFKFMFOFRGAGBGD
GEGFGIGLGMGNGPGR
GTGWGYHKHNHRHUID
IEILINISITJMJOJP
KEKGKHKIKMKNKRKW
KYKZLALCLILKLSLT
LULVMAMCMDMEMGMH
MKMLMNMQMRMSMTMU
MVMWMXMYMZNANCNE
NFNGNINLNONPNRNU
NZOMPAPEPFPGPHPL
PMPNPTPWPYQARERO
RSRURWSASBSCSESG
SHSISJSKSLSMSNSO
SRSTSVSZTCTDTGTH
TJTMTNTOTTTVTWTZ
UAUGUSUYVAVCVEVG
VNVUWFWSYEYTZAZM
ZW

Supported currencies

PayPal supports processing payments in the following currencies:
Currency codeCurrency codeCurrency codeCurrency codeCurrency codeCurrency codeCurrency codeCurrency code
AUDBRLCADCHFCNYCZKDKKEUR
GBPHKDHUFILSINRJPYMXNMYR
NOKNZDPHPPLNRUBSEKSGDTHB
TWDUSD

Limitations

The following features are not supported by this connector:
  • Zero auth - Zero-dollar verification transactions are not supported
  • Partial authorization - Partial authorization for insufficient funds is not available

Integration

For PayPal, the default integration is through a redirect to PayPal’s hosted checkout page. Start by creating a new transaction with the following required fields.
var transaction = await client.Transactions.CreateAsync(
  transactionCreate: new TransactionCreate()
  {
    Amount = 1299,
    Currency = "USD",
    Country = "US",
    PaymentMethod =
      TransactionCreatePaymentMethod.CreateRedirectPaymentMethodCreate(
        new RedirectPaymentMethodCreate()
        {
          Method = "paypal",
          Country = "US",
          Currency = "USD",
          RedirectUrl = "https://example.com/callback",
        }
      ),
  }
);
After the transaction is created, the API response includes payment_method.approval_url and the buyer_approval_pending status.
{
  "type": "transaction",
  "id": "ea1efdd0-20f9-44d9-9b0b-0a3d71e9b625",
  "payment_method": {
    "type": "payment-method",
    "approval_url": "https://www.paypal.com/checkoutnow?token=..."
  },
  "method": "paypal"
}
Redirect the buyer to the approval_url so they can log in to PayPal, review the transaction, and approve the payment. After approval, the buyer is redirected to the redirect_url you provided when creating the transaction. Do not rely solely on the redirect - either poll the transaction or (recommended) rely on webhooks to detect the final status (for example capture_succeeded or failure states).

Direct integration

PayPal provides client SDKs for a direct integration where PayPal’s own checkout UI runs on your page or in your app. The two platforms differ in one important way:
  • Web renders PayPal’s Smart Button on the page before the buyer acts, and the button needs the PayPal clientId to load. To get that without creating a transaction on every page load, you preload the connection’s clientId/merchantId from a standalone session, then create the transaction and PayPal order lazily inside the SDK’s createOrder callback.
  • Mobile does not need this preload. PayPal’s native iOS/Android SDK is launched with an order that already exists, so you create the transaction when the buyer taps and hand the resulting orderId to the SDK — there is no button to render up front.
Pick your platform below. Both finish with the shared completion step.
A minimal end-to-end web example is available at gr4vy/sample-paypal-direct. It pairs an Express server that proxies the standalone session and creates the transaction through the Gr4vy SDK with a vanilla-JS frontend that renders the PayPal Smart Button and creates the order on click.
The Smart Button renders on page load, so you preload the clientId/merchantId and defer the transaction to createOrder.
  1. On page load, fetch the standalone session to get the connection’s clientId and merchantId. This requires the transactions.write scope, so call it from your server. It creates no transaction and makes no call to PayPal.
var session = await client.PaymentServices.SessionAsync(
  paymentServiceId: "<payment_service_id>",
  requestBody: new Dictionary<string, object>()
);

// session.ResponseBody contains clientId and merchantId
The response body holds just the two IDs. It contains no orderId, because no order exists until the buyer clicks.
{
  "clientId": "Ac3..._8",
  "merchantId": null
}
This call is optional. The clientId and merchantId are static connection values, so if you already have them you can skip the standalone session and pass them straight to the PayPal JS SDK. The session endpoint exists so you don’t have to hard-code or separately distribute the connection’s credentials to your frontend.
  1. Also on page load, initialize the PayPal JS SDK with the clientId from the standalone session and render the Smart Button. Set currency to the same currency as the order you create in createOrder (a mismatch fails the integration), and set intent to match the connection’s configured intent. The button defers the work to its createOrder callback, so the transaction and order are created on click (steps 3 and 4).
// From the standalone session in step 1:
const { clientId, merchantId } = standaloneSession;

// Load the PayPal SDK with the clientId. Set the intent parameter to match the
// transaction intent and the connection's configured intent (authorize or capture).
// This example uses capture, matching the transaction and session data below:
// <script src="https://www.paypal.com/sdk/js?client-id=${clientId}&currency=USD&intent=capture"></script>
//
// When merchantId is not null, add it as the merchant-id parameter:
// <script src="https://www.paypal.com/sdk/js?client-id=${clientId}&merchant-id=${merchantId}&currency=USD&intent=capture"></script>

let defaultCompletionUrl = null;

paypal.Buttons({
  fundingSource: paypal.FUNDING.PAYPAL,
  createOrder: async function() {
    // Step 3: your server creates the transaction (needs the private key).
    const { transactionId, sessionToken } = await createTransaction();

    // Step 4: exchange the session token for the orderId and completion URL.
    const session = await fetchTransactionSession(transactionId, sessionToken);
    defaultCompletionUrl = session.default_completion_url;
    return session.session_data.orderId;
  },
  onApprove: function() {
    // After the buyer approves, navigate to the default_completion_url to
    // finalize the transaction. That URL returns an HTTP 303 redirect back to
    // your redirect_url with the transaction result appended.
    window.location.assign(defaultCompletionUrl);
  }
}).render('#paypal-button-container');
  1. Inside the SDK’s createOrder callback, create a transaction with the integration_client set to web. Keep this call server-side. Set the transaction intent to match the connection’s configured intent.
var transaction = await client.Transactions.CreateAsync(
  transactionCreate: new TransactionCreate()
  {
    Amount = 1299,
    Currency = "USD",
    Country = "US",
    IntegrationClient = "web",
    Intent = "capture",
    PaymentMethod =
      TransactionCreatePaymentMethod.CreateRedirectPaymentMethodCreate(
        new RedirectPaymentMethodCreate()
        {
          Method = "paypal",
          Country = "US",
          Currency = "USD",
          RedirectUrl = "https://example.com/callback",
        }
      ),
  }
);
  1. Still inside createOrder, use the session_token from the transaction response to get the session data. This returns the orderId and a default_completion_url. It is meant to be called from the frontend and is not exposed in the SDKs, so call it with a plain request authenticated by the session_token. Return the orderId from createOrder so the PayPal SDK can open the approval flow.
POST /transactions/:transaction_id/session?token=:session_token
{
  "session_data": {
    "intent": "CAPTURE",
    "orderId": "5O190127JK314159X",
    "clientId": "Ac3..._8",
    "currency": "USD",
    "merchantId": "9X...L",
    "fundingSource": "paypal"
  },
  "default_completion_url": "https://api.sandbox.spider.gr4vy.app/transactions/:transaction_id/approval/some-token",
  "integration_client": "web"
}

Complete the transaction

After the buyer completes the payment flow, the PayPal SDK provides an onApprove callback (Web) or a completion block/callback (Mobile). To finalize the payment, call the tokenized default_completion_url from the session response. This URL is safe to call from the client as it contains an embedded token. On Web, navigate the browser to the URL (for example, window.location.assign(default_completion_url)) so it follows the HTTP 303 redirect back to your redirect_url. On Mobile, send a GET request to the URL from your completion callback.
GET :default_completion_url
The system automatically authorizes or captures the transaction once you call the approval endpoint. If intent=capture, the system captures the transaction. Please refer to the PayPal SDK documentation for further guidance.

Testing

PayPal provides a sandbox environment for testing transactions. After setting up your sandbox PayPal developer account, you can create test buyer accounts in the PayPal Developer Dashboard. Use these test buyer accounts to log in during the redirect flow and approve test transactions. The sandbox environment simulates the production flow without processing real payments. For detailed testing instructions and test account setup, see the PayPal Developer documentation.