Paypal on IPB 4.4 ??

[opentype]

Just for some perspective, while Braintree is getting trashed: keep in mind that the alternative of PayPal Billing Agreements isn’t exactly the perfect solution we all want to keep. Just look at the IPS description here: https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/suite-applications/commerce/getting-the-basics_384/understanding-recurring-payments-r289/
It’s essentially an article begging you not to use it. 😉 

 

[Steph Jensen]

To me, there seems to be no decent way to charge small amounts of money, ask for donations, or even let users charge for content, without being a company, or being a very well off economically established individual. I don't want to register as a company (at least not just yet)

[PoC2]

58 minutes ago, opentype said:

Just for some perspective, while Braintree is getting trashed: keep in mind that the alternative of PayPal Billing Agreements isn’t exactly the perfect solution we all want to keep.

Don't get me wrong, I was very interested in using Braintree as an alternative to straight PayPal. Then I did some more reading. Nothing is perfect, but some are going to be less perfect than others. PayPal at least doesn't hard hit your credit score.

[jcdesign]

1 hour ago, PoC2 said:

Don't get me wrong, I was very interested in using Braintree as an alternative to straight PayPal. Then I did some more reading. Nothing is perfect, but some are going to be less perfect than others. PayPal at least doesn't hard hit your credit score.

Yes they can do! Paypal can freeze you money 6 month if they find a rule you does not follow.

[Pete T]

48 minutes ago, jcdesign said:

Yes they can do! Paypal can freeze you money 6 month if they find a rule you does not follow.

yeah Paypal very funny over little items but i have now got approved braintree will see how better it is.

[PoC2]

50 minutes ago, jcdesign said:

Paypal can freeze you money 6 month if they find a rule you does not follow.

Of course they can. They always have, but they don't penalise you for just trying to sign up.

I wish everyone good luck with Braintree. Do let us know how it goes.

[Rolle]

I have a legitimate, registered EU business that runs a IPB site and was rejected by Braintree as well. They did not specify any reason in the email, just the standard automated "after careful review we have rejected your application". EU means no credit score, so I don't know on what basis they rejected me, after I asked in a followup email for the reason they did not answer it either, just more automated "we're sorry, we have procedures and requirements and you don't meet them" but didn't actually say what requirements.

I submitted all required information, including EU VAT registration number and linked my 100% verified business PayPal account with identical information which has been active and handling transactions for 7 years. It boggles my mind why IPB would remove support for billing agreements for PayPal and suddenly make them exclusive to some new untested gateway that requires explicit account approval. This is just another entry on a list of bad development decisions in recent releases, previous one being removal of SparkPost after some complaints, even though it worked just fine for overwhelming majority of sites. Disappointed.

[AlexJ]

5 hours ago, jcdesign said:

Yes they can do! Paypal can freeze you money 6 month if they find a rule you does not follow.

It's Ok to penalize people if they don't follow the rule as per ToS, in my book. Their company, their rules. For me it's not Ok, to do hard hit on your credit when Braintree is not even providing me any loan or giving any credit. Braintree process the payment and that's being it. I don't get any extra credit line or loan from them. 

Plus PayPal doesn't harm you for rejecting your account OR harms you when you sign up. 

[SJ77]

Braintree is TERRIBLE.  I don't mean to be negative but that's my opinion. (which nobody asked for LOL)

[Florent Bouillon]

9 hours ago, opentype said:

Just for some perspective, while Braintree is getting trashed: keep in mind that the alternative of PayPal Billing Agreements isn’t exactly the perfect solution we all want to keep. Just look at the IPS description here: https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/suite-applications/commerce/getting-the-basics_384/understanding-recurring-payments-r289/
It’s essentially an article begging you not to use it. 😉 

 

for big business, maybe. For small ones, Paypal stays perfect. In my case, I just want a way people gives and subscribe to my organization + basic recurring services or goodies selling. In fact all "downsides" listed are almost only advantages for me, because they mean more safety on the transactions. Paypal handling the whole is perfect. On the other side, Baintree is totally not suited for me, I would never be able to use it (and they would very probably reject me because too small for them).

[opentype]

2 minutes ago, Florent Bouillon said:

for big business, maybe. 

Huh? I haven’t made any statement where that reply would fit. 

[Florent Bouillon]

Just now, opentype said:

Huh? I haven’t made any statement where that reply would fit. 

I meant I understand the downsides listed in this article, but they do not really concern small activities, for me they're even advantages.

[bfarber]

22 hours ago, Rolle said:

I have a legitimate, registered EU business that runs a IPB site and was rejected by Braintree as well. They did not specify any reason in the email, just the standard automated "after careful review we have rejected your application". EU means no credit score, so I don't know on what basis they rejected me, after I asked in a followup email for the reason they did not answer it either, just more automated "we're sorry, we have procedures and requirements and you don't meet them" but didn't actually say what requirements.

I submitted all required information, including EU VAT registration number and linked my 100% verified business PayPal account with identical information which has been active and handling transactions for 7 years. It boggles my mind why IPB would remove support for billing agreements for PayPal and suddenly make them exclusive to some new untested gateway that requires explicit account approval. This is just another entry on a list of bad development decisions in recent releases, previous one being removal of SparkPost after some complaints, even though it worked just fine for overwhelming majority of sites. Disappointed.

I'm very sorry you feel this way.

As has already been noted, we are re-evaluating support for new PayPal setups in 4.4.

Existing PayPal users will be able to continue using PayPal without any problems following an upgrade, so if you use PayPal already then you've got nothing to worry about. And per Lindy's post there, if you don't but want to set up PayPal on 4.4, submit a ticket and we'll see if we can assist.

[David..]

Braintree requires A LOT of information. I believe they will refuse us too.

[roc13x]

Just adding my voice to the pile - also denied. Canned response, no specific reasons.

Quote

Thank you for your interest in Braintree. After careful review, your Braintree production account application has been declined. Our team manually reviews each application and considers several factors when making these decisions.

 

[The Old Man]

This is all very interesting and worrying at the same time, thanks to those for sharing their experiences. 

I previously had the Paypal Donate Sidebar plug-in installed and received hardly any donations at all for my personal website (not an official business). So I bought Commerce in the last Black Friday sale and set up Stripe which was really simple to do. Still no donations towards site costs received from it, and due to the Braintree/4.4 integration promotion, I put plans to introduce basic silver, platinum and gold subscriptions with 3M, 6M and 12M options on hold until 4.4 was to be released. 

I now need to update to 4.4 to ensure Google logins continue to work after the removal of Google+. The Braintree experiences sound awful, but PayPal subscriptions sound equally bad from the comments above. Yet I recall sites have been using PayPal for subscriptions for years in IPS, so I'm not sure what the current issues are with PayPal.

With Stripe being so easy to set up, despite admittedly not receiving a donation from it myself yet, I wonder if Stripe could be an option for simple member subscriptions?  I have that set up and ready to go on 4.3.6 and perhaps it could be a better option for others, due to the relatively straight forward setup process?

I feel very sorry for IPS having to deal with this situation, but huge thank you to them, it's reassuring to have their expertise and resources behind the scenes.

[opentype]

4 minutes ago, The Old Man said:

I previously had the Paypal Donate Sidebar plug-in installed and received hardly any donations at all for my personal website (not an official business).

Yeah, donations will usually not work, unless your users are reeeeaaally crazy about your site or organization. With subscriptions you can give them real benefits and/or acknowledgement as supporter in the community. That works much better. 

I would like to stress though that the hassle is mostly about automatic payments, not about membership subscriptions itself. On my oldest/biggest site I have VIP subscriptions running successfully without any automatic payments. I deliberately picked a longer term of 1 year and then people get an invoice and pay however they like each time. While automatic payments can increase the profits, it is by no means a requirement. So subscriptions can also work fine without Braintree or PayPal Billing Agreements. 

[The Old Man]

Thanks for that @opentype I had totally missed this is more about providing automatic billing, and that manual payments are still an option.