User's Guide

PayPal Permissions Service May 2012 11
1
About the PayPal Permissions
Service
With permission, you can execute PayPal API operations for a PayPal account holder. The
PayPal Permissions Service provides a way for account holders to grant permission to execute
API operations on their behalf programmatically.
Permissions Service Overview
Granting of permissions is handled by the Permissions Service API. If you call these API
operations, the account holder need not set third-party permissions in the Profile and then
explicitly notify you that permission has been granted. Your website or application can
incorporate this task seamlessly by calling Permissions Service API operations.
The Permissions Service API enables you to request and obtain permission from PayPal
account holders, such as the merchants or customers. Consider the following examples in
which the Permissions Service API can be used:
 You provide a shopping cart for merchants and need to make calls to the Express Checkout
API to complete payments into the merchant’s account. As a shopping cart provider, you
are a third party to the transaction between PayPal and the merchant and, thus, require
permission from the merchant to take actions that affect the merchant’s PayPal account.
The Permissions Service API enables your cart to request permission to execute Express
Checkout APIs on your behalf.
 You sell an application that provides reports and analyses of your customers’ PayPal
transactions. Accessing this information requires customers to grant you permission to call
the PayPal TransactionSearch and GetTransactionDetails API operations to
access their transactions. You can use the Permissions Service API to request permission of
each customer to execute TransactionSearch and GetTransactionDetails.
After requesting permission, you redirect the account holder to PayPal to grant the permission: