Question

I think these are pretty close to being non-coding question, but it has everything to do with my current efforts to implement express checkout using paypal NVP API and X.com is absolutely garbage compared to stackoverflow.

So here’s what I know, followed by some questions:

• If you are a USA paypal user (which means – you have a USA Billing address), you can only set a shipping address to USA. Even if the website tries to force an international address via NVP during “SetExpressCheckout”, it will ignore it and use a USA address within the users paypal account. If the user wants to manually put in a non-USA address, he can’t – it’s stuck to USA only.

• If you are NOT a USA paypal user (i tested with germany & canada), you can have your shipping and billing be in 2 different countries. Instead of being locked in, there is a dropdown field allowing you to select a different country.

Questions:

1) Why is this for USA… but not for places like germany and cananda (what’s the politics/laws/paypalpolicies)?

2) Does this mean that germany & canada is less protected by paypal than USA? I’m assuming the tigher requirements must mean that paypal has “safer” policies in the USA and therefore better protection?

3) My store is an international gift store, so the shipping & billing being in different countries happens 100% of the time. Can I turn off shipping addresses in paypal by making it a digital purchase, and when I do, am i still using paypal safely?

Thanks

Answer 1

1 and 2: Two words: Risk analysis. Another two words: historical data I’d imagine.
I don’t have any idea of PayPal’s inner workings when it comes to that, but I presume it’s something along those lines.

3: Yes, set NOSHIPPING=1 in your SetExpressCheckout API call and a shipping address won’t be collected. Note that you won’t be eligible for PayPal Seller Protection in this case though.