Callback on Paypal.me link or alternative API

Question

Hello dear stackoverflow PayPal community,

I will start by explaining the use case:

I have an app that let the users accept donations, but offer to the donors something in return for their donations.

e.g. User Joe create an account and create a page. User Patrick opens this page and donate to Joe, after successful donation User Patrick will receive a freebie to download. Now this can be done by a third party "let's call it OrgX". Orgx will accept the donation from Patrick and send it automatically to Joe. But I don't want to build the Orgx and handle the paperwork/ accounting/ Legal stuff.

Is there a way to know that Patrick successfully send the money to Joe? Like a callback/ IPN to the Paypal.me? Is there any alternative API that does not involve me creating a business and handling the accounting? I've seen Spotify does this in the Android App but Not the Web. What's the technology behind it and can it be ported to web?

Thank you and have a great day :)

Answer 1

For your use case, a donate SDK button may be sufficient.

You can configure it not with a hosted_button_id but rather a business parameter that points to the PayPal account that is going to receive the donation.

To specify an IPN listener URL for notifications, set notify_url as documented in HTML variables for payments standard.

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An alternative which does not use the PayPal donation checkout flow (but rather looks like a normal one-time-payment checkout) is to use a smart button from https://www.paypal.com/buttons/smart configured with label:donate , and then setting a payee object in it to indicate the receiver. The donation flow is better tailored for donation, so I don't recommend this option -- but it's possible.