How to connect with PayPal Payflow Pro

PayPal Payflow Pro is ideal for organizations that handle moderate to large number of transactions.

Updated over a week ago

📌 Note: As of January 25, 2018, all nations default to integrated payment processing with NationBuilder. For more information on accepting payments in NationBuilder, click HERE.

Table of Contents

Where to start

PayPal Payflow Pro is ideal for organizations that handle moderate to large number of transactions. Unlike a personal PayPal account, Payflow Pro is a fully-integrated payment processor, so donors don’t have to leave your website to enter their payment information during the donation process.

To get started, you need to have a PayPal Payflow Pro account. If you don’t have an existing Payflow Pro account, create one from their website. If you have an existing personal PayPal account, you can upgrade to Payflow Pro. When signing up for Payflow Pro, your credit card will be billed, so please review your information throughout the sign-up process.

Connect with PayPal Payflow Pro

You will need to have your PayPal Manager account login information in order to connect your nation with Payflow Pro. Once you have that information, access your NationBuilder control panel. 

Go to Settings > Payment processors > New processor and select Payflow from the "Select provider" dropdown under "Third-party processor." Click the Add payment processor button.

On the “New processor” page:

  1. Enter a name.

  2. Enter your Payflow account login name in the required “User” field. Although user information is optional when logging into your PayPal Manager account, a user must be specified when integrating software.

  3. Enter the Payflow partner in the “Partner” field. In this case, we use PayPal since the account was purchased directly from PayPal. If the Payflow account was provided by an authorized reseller, use the ID provided by the reseller.

  4. Enter your Payflow account password in the required “Vendor password” field.

  5. Check the list of credit card types your Payflow Pro account accepts.

  6. You can also select a time to settle your funds in the “Settles nightly at” field. When you select a time, such as 8:00 PM, the approved transactions get submitted to Payflow Pro for clearing at that time.

  7. If you want your Payflow Pro account to be in test mode, check “Testing mode.” You should also set your Payflow Pro account to test mode to ensure that no transactions are processed from both NationBuilder and Payflow Pro.

  8. You have the option to choose a description for your organization through the “Type of organization” dropdown menu. The different options include for profit, nonprofit, charity, individual, federal_candidate, federal_pac, federal_party, state_candidate, state_pac, state_party, local_candidate, local_pac, and local-party.

  9. Choose how donors will interact with your donation page. First, decide whether the donations are tax deductible. This status will appear on the donation page and on donation receipts.You may require a donor’s employer and occupation information, the employer’s full address, or just the employer’s city and state. You may also include corporate contribution fields. If you are a political campaign, check your local and Federal regulations to see if you are required to collect this information. Activate any setting by checking the appropriate text box.

  10. If your organization has a specific disclaimer or contribution rules required to accept donations, enter that copy in the "Contribution rules" text box. This includes specific disclaimers mandated by campaign finance law. Donors will have to check a box accepting these statements before submitting a donation.

  11. Once you’re done filling out the form, click the Save account button. A donation page that is connected to this payment processor will pull from these fields.

You’ll see your newly added payment processor in Settings > Payment processors > All processors. For more information on how to make the most of your Payflow Pro account, look through the Payflow FAQs.

Manage recurring donations in PayPal Payflow Pro

You can process recurring donations with Payflow Pro. Through PayPal's Recurring Billing, Payflow Pro authorizes the initial payment. When your nation receives a successful response, Payflow Pro sets up a recurring subscription and charges the initial payment.

The initial payment and subsequent payments will be listed as part of the monthly donation both on the PayPal website and in your nation’s control panel. Within your nation's control panel, all payments will be listed as part of the monthly donation.

There are two ways to handle recurring donations in Payflow Pro:

  1. You can process reference transactions for no additional fee.

  2. You can add the Recurring Billing service for an additional fee to automatically debit customers who have regularly scheduled payments.

Please note, Payflow recurring transactions are processed in your Nation starting every night at 9pm UTC. 

Contact Payflow Merchant Support for specific questions about PayPal products.

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