Accept PayPal Payments from Your Own Site

Integrate PayPal into your web site with a simple HTML form.

PayPal is more than a standalone auction payment service—it’s an engine that you can use to power transactions on or off eBay. Any site that sells products can accept PayPal payments, and can do so without forcing customers to type an email address and an amount into their browser windows.

Somewhat like an API, PayPal provides an HTTP interface to their payment system that works just like the Pay Now button at the top of completed eBay auctions. This allows you, as the seller, to specify an amount, a product name, and any other bits of information you’d like to associate with the payment.

Any seller can accept PayPal payments through their HTTP interface; no special agreement or settings are necessary, other than a basic PayPal account. There are two ways to integrate PayPal into your site.

Just a Link

The simpler of the two methods involves nothing more than a link placed on your site. For instance, this URL:

https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=paybot@ebayhacks.com&item_
name=wicket&amount=58.00&no_note=1

specifies the email address (paybot@ebayhacks.com), the product name (wicket), and the amount ($58.00). If you want to link the URL to an image (like the PayPal logo), use this code:

<a href="https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=paybot@ebayhacks.com&item_
name=wicket&amount=58.00&no_note=1"><img src="https://www.paypal.com/images/
x-click-but01.gif" border=0></a>

Other Pay ...

Get eBay Hacks now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.