Send Name and Phone to Paypal Checkout

Question

I'm trying to send a couple things to Paypal based on a link I found in their docs

• first_name
• last_name
• night_phone_a

I've prepopulated these friends but on the Order Summary I do not see any of these fields. In theory, should I see these fiends? I want to have them in both email sent and in the paypal summary when I log in. Is it normal that I do not see these fields and I'll see them once I complete the order or am I missing something?

Here's the form:

<form id="purchaseForm" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
    <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_cart" />
    <input type="hidden" name="upload" value="1" />
    <input type="hidden" name="business" value="[email protected]" />
    <input type="hidden" name="item_name_1" value="My Product Name" />
    <input type="hidden" name="item_number_1" value="12345" />
    <input type="hidden" name="amount_1" value="100.00" />
    <input type="hidden" name="quantity_1" value="1" /> 
    <input type="hidden" name="shipping_1" value="47.50" />
    <input type="hidden" name="return" value="http://www.domain.com/thank-you/" />
    <input type="hidden" name="night_phone_a" value="867-5309" />
    <input type="hidden" name="first_name" value="John" />
    <input type="hidden" name="last_name" value="Doe" />

    <input type="submit" value="Buy Now" />
</form>

I see everything else on the Order Summary: Business, Product, Price, Shipping, Quantity, but I do not see the name or phone.

Answer 1

PayPal does not use those fields that way.

Fields that describe what is being purchased are likely to be put into emails to the seller & the buyer because they deem that information to be of interest to both parties. Still, these fields are used to create a description of the goods or services being purchased; they are not straight pass-through fields. You should not rely on being able to parse them directly back out of the email.

Fields that describe the buyer (not the purchase) are used to prepopulate account creation fields in the case that the buyer is not already an account holder and chooses to create an account in order to pay. But if PayPal already has an account for the buyer then that account information is privileged over fields sent by the seller's website and the buyer information fields are discarded.

Additionally, even if some fields (such as phone number) are used to create a new account they may not make it into the email; PayPal's email formats guarantee that the buyer account will be identified (generally by email address), but the format of the email and the particular fields of information provided about the buyer account should not be taken as guaranteed, and most data fields are not simple passthroughs.

If you want to have information associated with a transaction, store it on your side associated with some invoice ID or "custom" field value that you pass to PayPal, as those fields are indeed passthroughs.