2013

SOAP API Developer Reference February 01, 2013 255
Recurring Payments and Reference Transactions API Operations
DoReferenceTransaction API Operation
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SoftDescriptor xs:string
(Optional) Per transaction description of the payment that is passed to the consumer’s
credit card statement.
If the API request provides a value for the soft descriptor field, the full descriptor
displayed on the buyer’s statement has the following format:
<PP * | PAYPAL *><Merchant descriptor as set in the Payment
Receiving Preferences><1 space><soft descriptor>
The soft descriptor can contain only the following characters:
 Alphanumeric characters
 - (dash)
 * (asterisk)
 . (period)
 {space}
If you use any other characters (such as “,”), PayPal returns an error code. The soft
descriptor does not include the phone number, which can be toggled between the
merchant’s customer service number and PayPal’s customer service number. The
maximum length of the total soft descriptor is 22 characters. Of this, the PayPal prefix
uses either 4 or 8 characters shown in the data format. Thus, the maximum length of
the soft descriptor passed in the API request is:
22 - len(<PP * | PAYPAL *>) - len(<Descriptor set in Payment
Receiving Preferences> + 1)
For example, assume the following conditions:
 The PayPal prefix toggle is set to PAYPAL * in PayPal’s administration tools.
 The merchant descriptor set in the Payment Receiving Preferences is set to EBAY.
 The soft descriptor is passed in as JanesFlowerGifts LLC
The resulting descriptor string on the credit card would be:
PAYPAL *EBAY JanesFlow
PaymentReason ns:PaymentReasonType
Indicates the type of transaction. It is one of the following values:
 None – Transaction is not identified as a particular type.
 Refund – Identifies the transaction as a refund.
MsgSubId xs:string
(Optional) A message ID used for idempotence to uniquely identify a message. This
ID can later be used to request the latest results for a previous request without
generating a new request. Examples of this include requests due to timeouts or errors
during the original request.
Character length and limitations: string of up to 38 single-byte characters.
This field is available since version 92.0.
Field Description