Advanced Features Guide

Express Checkout Advanced Features Guide April 2012 47
Handling Recurring Payments
Recurring Payments With the Express Checkout API
3
Billing the Outstanding Amount
If a payment fails for any reason, PayPal adds the billing amount (including shipping and tax,
if applicable) to the profile’s outstanding balance. Use the AUTOBILLOUTAMT field in the
CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile request to specify whether PayPal should add the
outstanding amount to the payment amount for the next billing cycle.
Whether or not you choose to include the outstanding amount with the payment for the next
billing cycle, you can also use the BillOutstandingAmount API to programmatically
collect that amount at any time.
Identifying Items as Digital or Physical Goods
Set all the payment details item fields in the following table in the
CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile request. If all items are digital goods, be sure to set
the item category field to Digital to get the discount rate for digital goods.
Required fields for specifying item details
Recurring Payments With the Express Checkout API
During the checkout flow, you can create one or more recurring payments and mix recurring
payments with other purchases.
The following diagram illustrates the typical processing flow to create recurring payments
during checkout.
NVP SOAP Description
L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_
ITEMCATEGORY
n
ItemCategory For digital goods, this field must be set to
Digital.
 Digital
 Physical
L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_
NAME
n
Name Item name.
L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_
AMT
n
Amount Cost of item.
L_PAYMENTREQUEST_0_
QTY
n
Quantity Item quantity.