Developer's Guide

Table Of Contents
Introducing Adaptive Accounts
Adding Bank Accounts as Funding Sources
1
12 May 2012 Adaptive Accounts Developer Guide
holder to your website. This greatly reduces the chances of losing customers during the
account creation flow.
That brings us to the key benefit of Adaptive Accounts: A streamlined account creation and
completion process. Research shows that removing barriers from account creation and
payment experience increases conversion and improves customer satisfaction.
Imagine the possibilities: With the CreateAccount method, shopping cart application could
create PayPal Business accounts for its merchants directly from the shopping cart site.
Adding Bank Accounts as Funding Sources
In addition to creating and verifying PayPal accounts, Adaptive Accounts lets your application
link bank accounts to PayPal accounts as funding sources. Traditionally, PayPal account
holders do this manually at PayPal.com. With the AddBankAccount method, you can now
offer your customers the benefit of a smooth, uninterrupted process where PayPal account
creation includes adding a funding source for the account, all in one fell swoop. If you are a
financial institution, you can offer customers who are also PayPal account holders an easy way
to link the bank account with your institution as a funding source for their PayPal accounts.
How does it work? Your application sends an AddBankAccount request, passing the relevant
bank account information, such as the account number and routing number. The PayPal
account holder is redirected briefly to PayPal.com to confirm the information, then returns to
your customers website.
Adding Payment Cards as Funding Sources
Adaptive Accounts lets your application link the created PayPal account to a credit card or
payment card. This card can then be used as a funding source (payment method) for the PayPal
account. To use this feature, you use the createAccount key from the CreateAccount
response and pass it with the AddPaymentCard method together with pertinent payment card
information.
For standard permissions, the AddPaymentCard method requires the PayPal account user to
confirm the payment card addition on paypal.com. Developers with advanced permissions can
pass the AddPaymentCard with the confirmedType element (set to NONE) to add payment
cards without redirecting to paypal.com.
Supported payment cards are:
Visa
MasterCard
American Express
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