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PayPal changes might affect your site - June 29, 2010

We have become aware that PayPal has made changes that *may* impact the integration between Vae CMS and PayPal.  This applies to people using PayPal Website Payments Standard, PayPal's no-monthly-fee product.

Specifically, our PayPal standard integration relies on a PayPal feature called Instant Payment Notification ("IPN").  IPN used to be enabled by default on all PayPal accounts, so our integration worked out-of-the-box. 

It seems that PayPal no longer enables IPN by default, and in some cases has retroactively disabled it on some accounts.  We're not sure why.  It is supremely annoying that PayPal made these changes without making any official announcement (at least that we can find), and it is easy to find reports on the Internet of other people who have been bitten by this.

If you are using PayPal Website Payments Standard, you should log into your PayPal account and verify that IPN is enabled.

Here are instructions on how to do so:

  1. Log in at http://www.paypal.com/
  2. From the navigation bar at the top, choose "Profile", under the "My Account" tab.
  3. Click the link that says "Instant Payment Notification Preferences".
  4. If you are in the USA, you should be on this URL:
    https://www.paypal.com/US/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_profile-ipn-notify
  5. If you see a button that says "Choose IPN Settings", you need to enable IPN.  Click that button.  Select the option for "Receive IPN messages (Enabled)".  For the URL, enter the following:

    http://<yoursite>.vaesite.com/?__v:store_payment_method_ipn=paypal

    Replace <yoursite> with the same subdomain that you use to login to the Vae backstage.  So if your site's backstage is "http://btg.vaeplatform.com", use "btg".  Note that this URL uses "vaesite.com", not "vaeplatform.com".  Then click the "Save" button.

    You should then see that IPN message delivery is Enabled.
  6. If you see that IPN is already enabled, you do not need to take any action.

Additionally, you should check your PayPal account to make sure that there are no transactions in there that did not get synced to your Vae CMS backstage.

We are very sorry that this action is required, however, when supporting 3rd party payment gateways, we will always be at the mercy of any decisions or changes they make.

Please feel free to contact your account manager or support if you have any questions.