Ruehri
Ruehri

Reputation: 858

Paypal: Pending payments with Express Checkout

I have implemented Paypal Express Checkout on my website. So far everything seems to work in my sandbox, except that the payments are not processed. Every payment is "pending".

The only reason I get is

    RECEIVING_PREFERENCE_MANDATES_MANUAL_ACTION

in the API response after executing the payment via API.

I cannot find any documentation on the reason, does anyone know how to fix it?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 5141

Answers (2)

Ian W
Ian W

Reputation: 567

Two things I discovered when getting "Pending" and RECEIVING_PREFERENCE_MANDATES_MANUAL_ACTION while testing in a new currency:

  1. https://www.{sandbox.}paypal.com/businessmanage/preferences/payments is the hard-to-find place where you can choose the "Accept all payments without converting ..." option.
  2. Even if that is set, your sandbox account might not yet hold a balance in the test currency and that still causes the "pending" status. To solve this, you need to log in with your business sandbox credentials ([email protected]) and go to Activity to see the fictitious test payments that have been attempted. Click on one that is "Unclaimed" and "Accept" it. In my case that initiated a EUR balance in the sandbox account, and from then on test EUR transactions were "Completed".

Upvotes: 0

wazabii
wazabii

Reputation: 324

You have probably already solved the problem, but maybe someone else has similar problem.

I believe the reason for this is because the payments are in a currency that you do not hold, you need to configure your Payment Receiving Preferences in your PayPal account. Otherwise, your payment status might be pending until you manually approve the payment in your PayPal account.

  1. Log in to your PayPal business account at www.paypal.com. Click the profile icon (Profile menu) on the top right side of the page. From the Business Profile menu, select Profile and Settings. (Note: If you do not see the profile icon on the top right, select Profile which appears in the top menu when the My Account tab is selected.)
  2. From the left menu, click My selling tools.
  3. In/under the Getting paid and managing my risk section, click the Update link for the Block Payments item.
  4. Update Allow payments sent to me in a currency I do not hold to "Yes, accept and convert them to U.S. Dollars") and click Save.

Upvotes: 18

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