Question

I am encountering a weird problem from paypal. When My shopping cart pass value with decimal places(like 1.15) it does not work and shows me the error:The link you have used to enter the PayPal system contains an incorrectly formatted item amount.

This is the output of without decimal numbers in amount which works:

paypal_class->dump_fields() Output:

Field Name     Value
amount_1       70.00 
business       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cancel_return  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cmd            _cart 
currency_code  HUF 
invoice        171SPLINTERCELLCONVICTIONxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
item_name_1    Apple 
item_number_1  211 
notify_url     xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
on0_1          Option 
os0_1          Default 
quantity_1     1 
return         xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
rm             2 
shipping_1     5 
tax_cart       0.00 
upload         1 

This is the output of with decimal places which does not work(I deleted some of the variables for security reasons).

paypal_class->dump_fields() Output:

Field Name     Value
amount_1       70.15 
business       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cancel_return  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
cmd            _cart 
currency_code  HUF 
invoice        172SPLINTERCELLCONVICTIONxxxxxxx
item_name_1    Apple 
item_number_1  211 
notify_url     xxxxxxxxxxx 
on0_1          Option 
os0_1          Default 
quantity_1     1 
return         xxxxxxxxxxx 
rm             2 
shipping_1     5 
tax_cart       0.00 
upload         1 

and it does not work for only the three currencies:
Hungarian Forint,
Japanese Yen,
Taiwan New Dollars.

Is there any help? Will be grateful.

Answer 1

Your application should pass the correct currency format to PayPal via the class you’re using.

So if you’re storing prices as decimal numbers in your database (as US dollars for example) but a visitor sets their locale/viewing preference to Yen, then your application should convert prices accordingly (and in this case to an integer with no decimal places), which should then be passed to your PayPal class.