I got the following from Paypal yesterday. How will it affect zencart users, and do any changes need to be made?

We're sending this notification today to inform you of enhancements to the Payment Review feature coming this September. Most importantly, if you are using Instant Payment Notification (IPN), Payment Data Transfer (PDT), or the GetTransactionDetails API, we want to make sure your integration will be ready for these enhancements.

As you may recall, the Payment Review feature identifies high-risk transactions and notifies merchants of the review so they can hold shipments until PayPal has evaluated the transaction risk. PayPal currently notifies merchants of the review via email, as well as transaction status within their PayPal account. For on-eBay transactions, eBay GetItemDetails API and payment status within My eBay also provides notifications of Payment Review.

Please note: Payment Review is typically applied prior to completing the transaction (instantly), but will occasionally be applied minutes after the transaction completes. PayPal plans to migrate entirely to instant Payment Review by early 2009.

In September, PayPal is introducing new ways to determine which payments are placed under review. The enhancements will allow you to access the status of all transactions under review through Instant Payment Notification (IPN), and by checking the status of transactions with the GetTransactionDetails API or with Payment Data Transfer (PDT).

Here’s what you need to know about the Payment Review enhancements. You should prepare for potential integration changes to ensure that you can support the new payment status and pending reason.

Changes to GetTransactionDetails API

When PayPal places a payment under review, the GetTransactionDetails response will contain the following:

The Status field will be set to Pending
The PendingReason field will be set to PaymentReview
We’ve also implemented a ProtectionEligibility field that tells the merchant what kind of protection applies to the transaction.

As Payment Review can be applied minutes after the initial payment, an API call 15 - 30 minutes post-payment would determine if the transaction has been placed under review.

Changes to IPN

Merchants will receive the following IPNs when PayPal places a payment under review prior to completing the transaction (with release 54.0, this will only occur for reviews applied instantly – in early 2009 Payment Review IPNs will be available for all transactions under review):

The payment_status IPN variable will be set to Pending
The pending_reason IPN variable will be set to PaymentReview
Note: A Payment Review IPN will not be sent if the transaction is placed under Payment Review minutes after the transaction completes. In this case, the GetTransactionDetails API can be used to determine status.

When the transaction review has been resolved, you’ll receive the following IPNs:

If the transaction was successful and the payment accepted, the IPN’s payment_status variable will be set to Completed
If the transaction failed and the payment rejected, the IPN’s payment_status variable will be set to Reversed
In addition, we have a new protection_eligibility IPN variable that notifies merchants of the kind of protection applicable for the transaction (e.g., ExpandedSellerProtection means the seller is protected by Expanded Seller Protection, and SellerProtection means the seller is protected by the PayPal Seller Protection Policy).

Changes to PDT

The following PDT variables reflect the status of a transaction placed under review:

The payment_status will be set to Pending

The pending_reason will be set to PaymentReview

As with the IPN and GetTransactionDetails API operations, you can also find out about seller protection through the new protection_eligibility variable.

Download the PayPal Order Management Integration Guide for more information on IPN and PDT.

For more information on GetTransactionDetails, review the Name-Value Pair API Developer Guide and Reference or the SOAP API Developer Reference.

If you have any questions or need support in integrating, visit the Integration Center.

Sincerely,

PayPal Merchant Support