Question

I setup a Paypal Sandbox account and am trying to create simple purchases through my site. However, I don’t receive an automated IPN response on my site when the payment goes through. I know the url is right, because after the payment goes through I have the option to “Return to [My Site] Store”. Clicking this correctly invokes the notification url that I setup in Paypal, and the payment is correctly processed in my app. If the user does NOT click this link, but instead clicks “Add funds from your bank” or something like that, the notification is never sent. I was under the impression that this would be sent asynchronously and would not be dependent upon me clicking a link.

So the steps, again:

1. Click on “Buy Now” in my app
2. Get taken to paypal site
3. Login using Sandbox buyer credentials
4. Click “Pay now”
5. Get brought to “Thanks for your order” page, that has links.
   1. If I click the link to go back to my site
      1. Brought to yet another paypal screen that says “Thanks for your order – payment is complete” again.
      2. PAYMENT PROCESSED SUCCESSFULLY BY MY APP – Win!
   2. Don’t click this link – do anything else.
      1. Payment NEVER recorded in my app – Lose!

Note: I have not tried this on production since I am just coding it now. Am I missing something?

Answer 1

This was User Error. I had inadvertently sent up the wrong username in my Paypal button. The IPN was never getting sent. The payment was processed successfully when I clicked the button because the “success” link was forwarding to another page I have that also processes the payment without an IPN.