CC sale versus CC authorization

We know that the default transaction for PS3 is a sale type where the buyer's CC gets charged right away through a payment gateway such as PayPal, using their Website Payments Pro option.

Website Payments Pro can also handle CC Authorization transactions for the cases where product shipment is delayed (a week or so) due to assembly, as opposed to a CC sale type transaction for goods that are shipped within 24 hours. In the former case funds are placed on hold and captured at the time of shipment. In the latter case of course the CC is charged right away.

According to PayPal, the shopping cart and/or checkout process used would need to flag the transaction as an "authorization" instead of a "sale". Is there code within PS3 that can be edited to mark a transaction appropriately? Something like:

paymentAction=sale;

changed to:

paymentAction=authorization;

Thanks,
Robert

The code that sets this value would be on the confirm and pp_confirm pages. However, PowerStore was built with only sale type transactions in mind so you may need to do some additional work in the checkout process to make it work correctly.

Thanks Eric. I understand that PS3 was not designed with this type of transaction in mind, but never the less, if it can be modified to support Authorizations instead of Sales, I would think that would be of benefit to others too, not just me.

You say the code I am looking for can be found on confirm and pp_confirm....and maybe the checkout page? Can you elaborate please? Is this a big deal, or just a few lines of code. The concept seems simple enough, and PayPal seems to think the changes on the cart end are minor.

Would eCart5 (which I have) be any help with these changes?

Thanks,
Robert

You will need to make use of eCart to make these changes. The first thing to do would be to update the server behaviors that are on the confirm and pp_confirm page. You will need to update the PayPal payments pro server behaviors by double clicking on them in the server behaviors tab. When you are editing them you will have the option to set the PaymentAction. You can also do this directly in the code. The problem with editing the server behaviors is that they make use of custom code, this is why we do not recommend updating them.

I made the following changes to the code (not via the server behaviors) on both the confirm.php and pp_confirm.php pages:

$WA_PP_ECO_Do_optional[0][$nextIndex] = "PaymentAction";
//$WA_PP_ECO_Do_optional[1][$nextIndex] = "Sale";
$WA_PP_ECO_Do_optional[1][$nextIndex] = "Authorization";

I cannot tell if this change is working on the PP end, perhaps because of another problem. What I am seeing now is what I was seeing before the above change, after making a purchase within PS3:

I get checkout_success.php thanking me for my order. Everything looks correct.
I get an email with the order receipt with the payment information. Everything looks correct.

However, I do not see any record of the transaction (sale or authorization) in the business history of the PayPal sandbox. So, is this a PS3 or PP sandbox problem?

I have made all the updates to PS3 according to the "sticky" threads.

FYI, here is the code on both the confirm.php and pp_confirm.php pages "as-is" relating to the sandbox:

$WA_PP_ECO_Do_optional[0][$nextIndex] = "UseSandbox";
$WA_PP_ECO_Do_optional[1][$nextIndex] = "".($WAGLOBAL_Paypal_Sandbox == 1)?"true":"false" ."";

Please help. If I cannot get this resolved in the next few days I will lose this client. I also have a ticket opened on the PP end, but I want to be sure that this is not a PS3 problem before I pursue a PP solution on that end.

Thanks,
Robert

You should only be getting to the success page if you are successful in the action taken on the confirm page. The only other time that you get to the success page is if you have it set to test mode in the admin area under the settings.

Do you know if an Authorization that has been processed by PayPal will show up in your profile? If it should show up and you have made the changes noted and get to the success page without anything being listed on PayPal it would seem that you are set to test mode.