Developer's Guide

Introducing Adaptive Payments
Preapproved Payments Flow
26 August 7, 2012 Adaptive Payments Developer Guide
2. PayPal responds with a key, called a preapproval key, that you use when you direct the
sender to PayPal, and once the preapproval has been established, whenever you
automatically complete a payment on behalf of the sender.
3. You redirect your sender’s browser to PayPal.
4. After the sender logs in to paypal.com and sets up the preapproval, PayPal redirects the
sender’s browser to a location you specify.
NOTE: The cancel operation is not shown in the above diagram. Cancellation is handled by a
separate cancellation URL to which PayPal redirects the sender’s browser any time
the sender cancels while on paypal.com.
In addition to the steps shown above, PayPal sends an email notifying you and the sender that
the preapproval has been created.
After the sender sets up the approval, you can make payments on the sender’s behalf directly.
The sender is no longer required to log in to PayPal to complete the payment. The following
diagram shows the basic flow of control during a Pay operation:
The following items correspond to the circled numbers in the diagram:
1. Your site or device sends a Pay request to PayPal on behalf of a sender. You can require the
sender to provide a personal identification number (PIN); however, logging in to
paypal.com is no longer required.
NOTE: You must provide a preapproval key that identifies the agreement.
2. PayPal still responds with a payment key that you can use for other API operations, such as
for obtaining details of the payment or for issuing a refund.