Pay Pal API Is Too Restrictive

[Elshara Silverheart]

I'm not sure if I'm the only one here, but setting up Pay Pal API is not a straight forward process.

1. I'm no stranger. I have a business Pay Pal account. With a dedicated API Username, Password and Signature assigned.

2. That's not the information that payment method accepts when trying to put it as a payment method. Even though that is the information requested when wanting to make withdrawals and refunds. Basically, something's not right.

3. This needs to be simplified. So that such information is used in both areas for with withdrawal settings and default pay pal payment methods in and of itself Otherwise, there's no guarantee that you aren't paying out of pocket as a site owner for refunds if you want them, based on something another member may have paid for towards a store service to someone else.

4. If you don't include that method, the only other option I can see is to use a paypal.me address using the manual option to even add pay pal in the list of available accepted methods. Even stripe makes this easier and I'm not that familiar with it. The problem with the pay pal me links is basically a last resort option you have of getting any money through to someone. There's no fraud checks, there's just a donation amount to a single pay pal account being used for all transactions. While I do admit people can put their own links up, that service itself was born from the inability to use pay pal donation buttons themselves for specific amounts. And my fear here is that IPS won't let an admin properly format one such button even in the WYCIWYG editor or CKEditor just for the button to preview itself. Especially on the cloud platforms, since it uses javascript tags.

So if someone could work on a less painful method to integrate pay pal easier for most transactions, that would be a really big help for some communities who don't need the comprehensive review checks for that other impossible API that is needed.

Another option that isn't built into IPS, is to use a Pay Pal IPN setting.