Paypal to paypal payments

Question

I want to provide a question and answer service (I know there are thousands of such sites on the internet) to my users where someone can ask a question by specifying how much money they will give the person who provides a good answer.

When a good answer is provided, is it possible to take the money from the questioners paypal account and send it to the answering persons account automatically?

Basically, what I don't want to do is take payments from the questioner and hold it in my paypal account, then pay the answering person when his/her answer is accepted.

I will be using a LAMP configuration to make the service.

Answer 1

Many posters have said that AP is a good choice. This is correct. You will need to request an application which provides an app ID once your app is approved by the vetting team. You apply here: https://www.paypal-apps.com/

Provide as much detail as you can so that they don't have to come back to you with questions about your business, etc. Once it is approved, you can use the app ID provided and start development in a live environment.

If you want to get the API working while they review your app, you can use sandbox. https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/lifecycle/ug_sandbox/ I believe that the vetting team requires that you have a sandbox account / setup so that they can test your implementation once you are done.

Don't be fooled because you have ALL API permissions in sandbox. So if you forget to request a needed method like mass pay, you will not have that feature in live, even though it worked for you in Sandbox. If you need a feature, request it WHEN YOU APPLY. Otherwise, you will need to start a new app request. This isn't a big deal, but if time is of the essence, you will have to wait (usually 24 - 48 hours or so) for the app to be approved, barring any questions / requests that PayPal has for you.

Integration guide for AP: https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/adaptive-payments/integration-guide/APIntro/

API operations and operations for Adaptive Payments: https://developer.paypal.com/webapps/developer/docs/classic/api/#ap

Answer 2

I'd like to think wildly here (meaning not thoroughly so forgive me if there are mistakes). I think there are a few PayPal products you can consider. They do not perfectly fit, but here they are for your reference:

Auth / Order, Reference Transaction (aka RT), and Adaptive Payment (aka AP, but it doesn't fit your situation very much).

As I understand, your scenario would be like this:

1. The questioner posts a question, and agrees to pay a certain amount of money, say $5.
2. You don't want to hold the money. (hmm this is hard)
3. When a responder answers the question, and the question is selected as the best, the money is paid automatically from the questioner via PayPal.

With Auth / Order, it works like this:

1. The questioner "auth" you to take the $5. This money is NOT charged yet, but is still in the questioner's account. The amount can be honored too, just like you book a hotel. (Note you can honor the money for at most 29 days.)
2. When an answer is selected as the best and the responder is to be paid, you capture the money from the questioner. This way, they money is now in your account. (I know you don't like this...)
3. Then you pay the responder immediately. You can transfer money, you can use Mass Pay API, you can use PayPal Payouts API.

Well I know the best case would be that the money never appears in your account, not even a millisecond. But this is what I can think of, "immediately" is the closest to "not at all". Another problem with this way is, it's done in two steps, and in each step you or someone has to pay the fee. When you as the platform gets the money, you pay the fee, and then when you send it out, it depends on which product you use. But the good thing is, the money is never charged until it has to be charged. And it doesn't have to be charged if there is not a good answer at all.

With RT, it's similar to Auth / Order, it's an agreement between the questioner and you (the platform). The agreement lasts longer (2 years I think), but you still have to pay the responder, and you can't honor the money, meaning when you capture it, you may fail. Good thing is (or maybe this is the bad thing), you can charge the questioner many times with only one agreement.

With AP, it provides "Parallel" payment, meaning the questioner pays you AND the responder with only one payment, and you can share the payment with the responder, and you can decide who receives how much. You can also decide who pays the fee. But the problem is, the questioner has to be present to make the payment, so it's not done automatically without the questioner. (Express Checkout / EC does parallel payment too with some differences, also on the fee thing. So if you want to go AP way, you may also want to consider EC because it's a lot easier to integrate.)

I would go for Auth / Order. But maybe you can get in contact with PayPal merchant technical services and ask for more details. https://ppmts.custhelp.com/

Or, here is the website of their documents: https://developer.paypal.com/

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

You can use the PayPal Adaptive. Using this you can transfer money from one account to another account. Download the sample source code from GutHub https://github.com/paypal/adaptivepayments-sdk-php

Answer 4

Have you looked into PayPal Adaptive Payments API? From what I know it supports person-to-person money transfer. For more info visit

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_APIntro

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

Neither the PayPal API nor the PayPal service in general provides for automatic person-to-person payments that are initiated by a third party. In other words, you must either be the payer or the payee in order to participate in a transaction; you cannot do it on behalf of another user.