What it is

PayPal is an international payment processing service that allows customers to pay by credit card or create a digital wallet linked to alternative payment methods. With a global reach, PayPal has been part of many businesses’ international expansion.

How it works

MultiSafepay supports seamless integration with PayPal with the PayPal API. Funds are transferred directly to the merchant’s PayPal business account, while the transaction statuses and payment validation are managed by MultiSafepay. In order to integrate your PayPal Business account with MultiSafepay, the PayPal account API settings must be configured. Once the integration is completed, you can receive payments through this gateway by using one of our plugins or by implementing a custom integration with our API.

The transaction status refers to the status of the actual payment. MultiSafepay uses the order status for PayPal transactions. Since we do not collect the funds of completed PayPal transactions (as they are directly sent to your PayPal account), the financial status will remain initialized.

Please note the various descriptions of statuses and how they should be interpreted.

Transaction flow

The transaction flow shows the different ways a transaction can be processed. This differs per payment method.

• Order status
  The order status indicates the status of the order, such as completed, pending or rejected. The order status is independent of the incoming or outgoing payment of the transaction.

• Transaction status
  The transaction status indicates the payment status of the transaction, such as completed, pending or rejected. Once the transaction status is completed, the amount of the transaction is added to your MultiSafepay balance.

Refund flow

The full API reference for PayPal and credit cards can be found here.

What is Seller Protection

PayPal Seller Protection covers you in the event of claims, chargebacks, or reversals that are a result of unauthorized purchases or items your buyer did not receive. With PayPal Seller Protection, you are covered for the full amount of all eligible transactions.

Full documentation on What is Seller Pretection with PayPal transactions.

Product rules

Some rules may apply to certain payment methods. For PayPal, the following rules apply:

• Refunding more than the stated amount of the original transaction is not possible for PayPal. More information is available on our refund more than original amount page

• Successful PayPal transactions have a maximum refund period of 60 days. After this period, it is advised to process the requested refund by different means

• A PayPal payment link is valid for 14 days. The lifetime of the payment link is set by PayPal. Therefore, a payment link created with PayPal will automatically expire after 14 days. Full documentation can be found on our lifetime of a payment link FAQ page
  

• Uncleared transactions can only be declined or accepted within your PayPal account

• Refunds will be processed only when your PayPal account balance is sufficient

• For information on which currencies are supported, please contact PayPal.

Activate

• Please note that specific required actions are highlighted with a blue frame on the screenshots below.

Account configuration

1. Login into https://www.paypal.com with your business account
2. Navigate to Tools->All tools->API credentials
3. Click on Grant API permission
4. Enter paypal_api1.multisafepay.com in the Third-Party Permission Username field. Click on Lookup

We need access to these options:

• Use Express Checkout to process payments
• Issue a refund for a specific transaction
• Process your customers credit or debit card payments
• Obtain information about a single transaction
• Obtain authorization for pre-approved payments and initiate pre-approved transactions
• Use Express Checkout to process mobile payments.

In order to ensure a correct integration with PayPal, you must change the language encoding setting of your PayPal account to UTF-8.

To do this, please follow the steps below:

1. Go to Language Encoding in your PayPal account and select the desired language

2. Click on More Options. Change the Encoding to UTF-8 by selecting it from the dropdown menu.
   The following question will appear: “Do you want to use the same encoding for data sent from PayPal to you?”
   Answer with ‘yes’ and click on Save.

MultiSafepay Control configuration

1. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner and select Account Settings -> Business information.

2. Copy your PayPal Merchant ID

3. Log in into your MultiSafepay Control

4. Navigate to Settings->Payment methods. Select ‘PayPal’ and enter your PayPal Merchant ID.

Your account is now configured and you are ready to accept MultiSafepay payments. We strongly recommend you perform one or more test transactions in order to ensure everything is working correctly.

If PayPal is not visible as a payment method in your MultiSafepay Control account, please contact the Integration Team at [email protected] to assist you further.

Please note that if you have enabled payment methods on a particular website, you should also enable PayPal for that specific website.

Request refund

The refund of a PayPal transaction can be processed from within your MultiSafepay Control.

Please follow these steps:

1. Select Transactions -> Transaction overview
2. Find the transaction through search
3. Open the transaction
4. Select refund
5. Fill in the amount that you are going to refund to the customer
6. Confirm.

Please note that by default, MultiSafepay does not allow for you to refund more than the stated amount of the original transaction. Please refer to the product rules for more information.

• The transaction status is now initialized. As long as the transaction status is marked as initialized, the refund can be cancelled. When the transaction status is marked as completed, the refund is processed correctly. The customer will receive the refund to the bank account number in which the transaction was originally paid to, within the next business day

• PayPal transactions can be refunded within 60 days

• A refund will only be processed if your PayPal balance is sufficient. Otherwise, PayPal will proceed with issuing an eCheck. You will need to make sure that PayPal is authorized to withdraw funds from a linked bank account when a refund is requested and your balance is insufficient, in order to avoid a potential cancellation on PayPal’s side. As a merchant, you will need to take care of these settings yourself, from within your PayPal account. Failing to do so can result in a cancelled refund and follow-up complaints and escalation from your customers. For any questions related to this topic, we strongly encourage you to reach out to PayPal’s support.