PayPal Express Checkout - not "on" the site?

[RobM]

Hi all,

I thought with PayPal express it did everything on your site and there was no need to navigate off to PayPal etc?

Well i've installed it, got all the API info from my PayPal account and entererd it in Zencart. It's also added all the checkout buttons and so on.

However you add the item to your cart, go through the checkout and when you "confirm order" it goes off to the PayPal website where you can either login/create an account or just click through and enter your card details. I thought it was supposed to do this on your site?

Any ideas?

[DrByte]

That's exactly how Express Checkout works.

You might be thinking about Website Payments Pro, which is a subscribed service whereby customers can only pay by Credit Card (and not PayPal funds) but the credit card is processed by PayPal in the background without the customer knowing that PayPal did the transaction. Support for Website Payments Pro will be in the upcoming v1.3.8 version of Zen Cart, due out soon.

[RobM]

Oh right, so whats the difference between PayPal Express and the default PayPal module then?

[Merlinpa1969]

express has less isues, and your customers DONT have to create an account on your site its done for them with their paypal credentials

[DrByte]

On the front end, the Express Checkout module offers a potentially shorter checkout flow.
In the background, the Express Checkout module will release an order immediately when it's been paid-for. The IPN module waits for PayPal's servers to send a notice to your website in the background in order to release the order. There are often problems with the background communications (due to hosting server limitations) which means orders "appear to" go missing as they wait for successful alerts from PayPal.

In the end, both modules let you accept payment. But one is more quickly usable than the other.

[damon]

express has less issues, and your customers DONT have to create an account on your site its done for them with their paypal credentials

I've got PEC working, tested in sandbox and just got my first real order. I don't see where the customer is notified that they now have an account on the site so they can login to check orders. Should Zen or the PEC module be sending an account notification?

Damon

[DrByte]

(If the option is enabled in the Zen Cart EC module) Zen Cart sends a welcome email to the customer when it auto-creates their account. The bottom of the email includes their password.