[nfbcs] Setting Up a Website to Accept Payments via PayPal

[Brian Buhrow]

	Hello.  Jim suggested I get on this mailing list, something I should
probably have done anyway, serving on the NFBCS board as I do, since I've
done what Mike is asking about for the NFB of California.  While jim is
technically correct in that they don't use the exact web forms I wrote some
years ago, the system they use to this day is, for the most part, exactly
as I built it some 6 or 7 years ago.

	Let me try and address Mike's points as best as I can.

	There is a documentation section on the Paypal web site and it has
documents on various ways to build payment systems that talk to Paypal.
Some of them involve using plug-ins with varius packages while others
involve purchasing services from third parties that integrate with Paypal.
What I wanted was a simple html form that could tell Paypal how much the
buyer was willing to pay, exactly what they were paying for and how to
determine who paid for what without having to look at Paypal receipts
directly.  Also, I wanted a system whereby the NFB of California was not
responsible for handling user credit cards in any way shape or form.  Since I 
did this in 2007, I don't remember how I assembled the
documentation I did, exactly, but if you browse to:
http://www.nfbcal.org/~buhrow/pp-standard-variables.txt
you'll get a txt file containing a description of the various methods for
submitting html forms to Paypal with all the details I outlined above.
Although this documentation is older, I assure you it's still absolutely
relevant since I just finished attending a conference for another
organization which uses the forms and system I built in the same way.  If
you're in a hurry and just want to see an example button, using both "post"
and "get" methods for creating the button, browse to:
http://www.nfbcal.org/~buhrow/paypal-button-sample.txt
and you'll get a snippet of html that can be modified and used in your own
forms page to create donation buttons or registration buttons.  

**IMPORTANT**
If you put this html into a real page, you'll get a submission button that
will really take you to Paypal and they'll really think you're going to pay
$15 to the NFB of California.  The submission address in the form is bogus,
but Paypl will happily hold your money for a month while they figure it
out.
**/IMPORTANT**

	Below are notes which document some of the caveats I learned about
setting up Paypal accounts.  I've done this twice now, so hopefully these
notes will save others the grief I've gone through when they do their's.


1.  The e-mail address associated with a Paypal account is immutable.  Once
you create an account and assign it an e-mail address, you cannot change
the e-mail address associated with that account without closing and opening
a new account from scratch.  This has many ramifications on many fronts.  I
strongly recommend creating an address which is itself a list that can be
distributed to  other e-mail addresses or automated e-mail processing
systems -- see below.  This gives you the flexibility to change the flow of
Paypal mail as your board changes or as you implement new features on the
web site -- I'll give an example below.

2.  If you open a Paypal account as a business or as a non-profit, you'll
be asked to supply documentation proving your status as a business or
non-profit.  This involves producing documents showing your 501(C) status,
a cover letter on official letter head and any other documents Paypal asks
for.

3.  In order to be permitted to transfer more than $500/month from your
Paypal account to another banking institution, you'll need to have what's
called a verified account.   this means Paypal needs to know the account
details for the affiliate account you want to use as the verifying account.
 Things like account number, routing number, etc.  If you opened the
account as a business or non-profit, you'll need to make sure the banking
institution which holds the verifying account recognizes you as a business
or as a non-profit as well.

4.  All of this verification is done the old fashioned way, i.e. with
telephone calls, printed papers and US mail.  consequently, getting your
Paypal account established the way you want is a labor intensive time consuming
process and something you want to do only once if you can help it. See note
1 above regarding the immutability of e-mail addresses associated with
Paypal accounts.

5.  Once you're done with all this banking mumbo jumbo, you can get down to
the business of setting up donation buttons, registration forms and the
like.  While Paypal can make the distinction between payments and
donations, for our purposes, there's no difference since our affiliates are
non-profits and all payments are, technically speaking, donations.  What
this means is that you can set up payment forms any way you like.  You can
embed the payment price inside a hidden field of the button, or you can
give users an edit box to let them choose how much they want to pay.  In
either case, by the time they get to the Paypal payments page, Paypal
knows, from the URL you generated, how much to charge and who to pay.

6.  What I wanted when I set up the registration system for the NFB of
California was a way to automatically corelate payments from Paypal with
registration forms from users.  The registrant would then receive two
pieces of e-mail when they registered: a receipt from Paypal and a
confirmation of their registration for the event in question.  That
confirmation would contain their registration preferences and would be sent
to the coordinators of the event as well as the registrants themselves so
they could use it as proof of purchase.  The confirming e-mail would not be
generated until the registrant had completed the payment process with
Paypal.  The Paypal documentation above says that if you fill in a specific
form variable with a return URL, the payor will be taken to that URL
automatically once payment is received.  That statement is false.  What
happens is that if you fill in that form variable, a button appears on the
final page of the Paypal process inviting the payor to return to the
vendor's web site.  I discovered this discrepancy between the manual and
reality after I  set up the Paypal account with an e-mail address that was
not a list.  Needless to say, most registrants didn't click on that "return
to vendor" button and my scheme for generating that second piece of e-mail
to the event coordinators largely failed.  (See note 1 above.)
	When I set up the second Paypal account for a second organization, I
learned my lesson.  That account is setup with an e-mail address that goes
to a list which includes an automated mail processor which recognizes
paypal  payment notifications, something Paypal generates very reliably,
and which can corelate the payment transaction ID with the registrant's
registration packet and generate that afforementioned second e-mail.  For
the second Paypal account, the confirmation process works flawlessly
regardless of whether or not the registrant clicks on the "return to
vendor" button.
	I offer that story as a cautionary tale as to just one of the reasons it is
important to make sure you pick the e-mail address you use with your paypal
account with care.

	I hope these notes and observations are helpful and I'll be glad to
answer any questions folks might have to the best of my ability.

Sincerely,

-Brian