This is a very simple one, but one that can take a lot of google-search-query-nuance tweaking to find.
It’s easy to find the documentation to do PayPal Express Checkout, but to find that one little field where you send an alternate user as the recipient of the payments, well that’s downright impossible. It is not in the docs (at least not as of this writing 5-18-2011).
How simple is it? Very — the variable is “SUBJECT”
Yes, you specify an alternate “SUBJECT” of the transaction.
Normally your SetExpressCheckout request looks something like:
METHOD=<method_name>&VERSION=<version>&PWD=<API_Password>&USER=<API_UserName>&SIGNATURE=<API_Signature>&...
Now it will look like this:
METHOD=<method_name>&VERSION=<version>&PWD=<API_Password>&USER=<API_UserName>&SIGNATURE=<API_Signature>&SUBJECT=<Payee_PayPal_Account>...
Payee_PayPal_Account is the email address/username the user uses to log in.
Hope this helps! Took us valuable time to find …
Alex
November 18, 2011 at 11:40 am
Hi, thank you for this hint. It’s not well-documented in Paypal’s documentation and described poorly in Internet.
I’m implementing the same functionality now and I’ve got a question. I created two seller accounts in my Paypal sandbox: one is typical seller account and another is Payments Pro account. I’ve tried to pass each of them to Paypal sandbox services but no luck.
Passing any of these 2 accounts’ emails as a SUBJECT returns Paypal error 10423 “This transaction cannot be completed with PaymentAction of Authorization.” which is not documented at Paypal API Errors list.
Do you happen to know what’s wrong there? Is it a sandbox issue or I’m doing something wrong.
Thank you in advance.
Ryan
November 30, 2011 at 9:43 pm
You need to setup permissions between main and subject paypal account, I can’t recall the steps to do that, they don’t place the permission button on a noticeable place