PayPal: PDT or IPN

Hi everyone,

Forgive me if there is an answer to this somewhere in the forums, but a search has not turned up anything so far.

I have set up PayPal PDT and I'm wondering if I should also set up PayPal IPN. Should I be using one or the other, or can I use both? What would be the implications of setting up both? Would I get double notifications for every transaction?

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

PS: I'm using v1.6

Regards,

Wole.

Wole,

PDT (Payment Data Transfer) will send the data to your return URL that your buyer ends up at on your site so that you can display the information on your thank you/receipt page if you wish.  There is no guarnatee the user will ever make it to this page.

IPN (Instant Payment Notification) is a server to server communication that the user will actually never see.  You'll have an IPN listener script sitting on your web server and every time a transaction occurs with your PayPal account (purchase, refund, etc.) PayPal's server will POST this information to your IPN listener script sitting on your server.  This will happen regardless of whether or not the user exits before they get back to your site.

You can also find more info about configuring PDT and IPN here

Thanks Andrei,

This explains a lot. I take it then that it is preferable to implement both; use IPN to do all the necessary database updates but use PDT to only display information to the user!?

PayPal Standard options (PDT or IPN) have been discussed many times on these boards. However, I'm not sure if anyone has actually stated how turning these on causes nopCommerce to change how it processes orders, if at all. Like are order statuses automatically updated or does anything happen in the nopCommerce database when PayPal sends the PDT or IPN notifications?

If I turn on PDT, does that cause nopCommerce to process orders any differently?

If I turn on IPN, does that cause nopCommerce to process orders any differently?

Thanks,

Yes i have same doubt.

And i also noticed, on PayPal Standard, my order status does not update on the order page.

Thanks,
Varun