User Guide

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PayPal Merchant Tools
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Copyright 2003 PayPal. All rights reserved
Instant Payment Notification (IPN)
PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification (IPN)
service notifies you immediately whenever you
receive a payment. You can use IPN to integrate
PayPal payments with your website’s back-end
operations, helping you save time, keep your
inventory updated, and automate fulfillment.
To get started with IPN:
1. Log in to your PayPal account.
2. Click on the Instant Payment Notification
link on the Merchant Tools tab.
3. You’ll be taken to the IPN Center where
youcan view a demo, read the manual,
and sign up for IPN.
IPN works with all of PayPal’s Website
Payments solutions (Buy Now Buttons, PayPal
Shopping Cart, Subscriptions and Recurring
Payments, and Donations), as well as with
regular PayPal “Send Money” payments.
Note: Using IPN requires custom
programming by your web development
team to interface with a back-end database.
Alternately, some third party vendors offer
products to help you manage your PayPal
payments.
To learn more, go to the PayPal Developer
Network (PDN) by clicking on the
“Developers” link in the footer of any PayPal
page.
- Customize your website’s response to
customer purchases in real-time
- Track customers through the notification’s
“pass through” variables
- Automate your fulfillment operations
- Store transaction information in your own
database
With IPN, you can: