Integration Guide

PayPal Payments Pro Integration Guide April 2012 39
Getting Started With Direct Payment
Direct Payment Authorization and Captures
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Captures attempted outside of the honor period result in PayPal contacting the card issuer to
reauthorize the payment; however, the reauthorization and, thus, the capture might be
declined. If you know that you will capture after the honor period expires, PayPal recommends
that you call DoReauthorization to explicitly reauthorize the honor period before
attempting to capture the payment.
Consider an example in which the buyer orders three $100 items for a total of $300. You
specify Authorization for your payment action in the DoDirectPayment request because
the goods might not ship at the same time. For each of these items you call DoCapture to
collect the payment.
On the first day, you ship the first item and on the third day you ship the second item. The
payments for these items succeed because they occur within the honor period. If you ship the
third item on the fifth day, your call to DoCapture might fail if the issuer declined the attempt
by PayPal to reauthorize. Because the honor period has expired, you should explicitly call
DoReauthorization before calling DoCapture to determine whether the buyer’s funds are
still available. Likewise, if all three items were to be shipped together after the honor period
but before the valid period expires, you should explicitly call DoReauthorization before
calling DoCapture.
When you call DoCapture for the final payment, you must set the COMPLETETYPE field to
Complete. Prior calls to DoCapture must set this field to NotComplete. When payments
are complete, any remaining uncaptured amount of the original authorization is automatically
voided and nothing more can be captured.
You can explicitly void an authorization, in which case, the uncaptured part of the amount
specified in the DoDirectPayment request becomes void and can no longer be captured. If
no part of the payment has been captured, the entire payment becomes void and nothing can be
captured. For Visa and MasterCard, a hold caused by the authorization is reversed; a bank hold
might remain for 7 to 10 days until reversed by the card issuer.
NOTE: Authorizations become holds on a buyer’s account that typically last 3 days for debit
cards and 7 to 10 days for credit cards, depending on the issuer and region. If you
decide not to capture an authorization, you should void the transaction, which triggers
an authorization reversal.
API operations associated with the Authorization payment action in DoDirectPayment
DoDirectPayment Authorization and Capture Example
This example authorizes a credit card payment using the DoDirectPayment API operation
and then uses the DoCapture API operation to capture the payment.
API Operation Description
DoCapture Capture an authorized payment
DoReauthorization Reauthorize a payment
DoVoid Void an authorization