Advanced Features Guide

Express Checkout Advanced Features Guide April 2012 73
Implementing Parallel Payments
Best Practices for Online Travel Agencies Implementing Parallel Payments
5
using the Express Checkout PaymentDetailsType and PaymentDetailsItemType
parameter fields. To eliminate potential buyer confusion, you can let the buyer making a
deposit through Express Checkout know, for example, that they will need another payment
instrument to complete their purchase.
Payment Details
The following table provides PayPal’s recommendations for passing payment information.
Best practices for passing payment information
Pass, at least, the primary information below. PayPal recommends that you also pass the
secondary information. If the style of payment is a reservation with deposit, pass the deposit
only in the item description.
Item Best practices Example content
Merchant name You do not need to pass this data. PayPal
obtains the merchant’s name that
displays on the PayPal Review your
information page from the merchant’s
account record.
PayPal presents the
business name, for example,
Airline Name.
Item description Use L_PAYMENTREQUEST_
n_DESCn to
pass item description information as a
continuous text string. Pass at least the
primary information shown in the table
below. PayPal recommends that you also
pass the secondary information. If the
style of payment is a reservation with
deposit, pass the deposit only in the item
description.
See the table below.
Order description Use PAYMENTREQUEST_
n_DESC to pass
merchant-specific messages such as
cancellation charges for post-paid offline
transactions. This information does not
display on the PayPal Review page.
Instead, it appears in the buyer’s email
and in Transaction Details.
Your account will not be
charged now. You’ll later
make a payment directly to
merchant name.
If you cancel the order,
...
Note to merchant Do not use the ALLOWNOTE parameter. It
is ignored for parallel payments.