Account Access to REST Payouts API

[Randbay]

I am a non-US business account holder. My account is verified and in good standing.

I am trying to enable the REST Payouts API for very simple, single payouts.

The Payouts guide clearly tells me that to gain access to the API, I need to do the following:

"Note: Merchants in other countries must contact their account manager or customer services to enable Payouts in the live environment."

When I call Paypal customer services, absolutely nobody seems to have any idea what I am talking about, and I get passed between every department in the company for upwards of an hour. If I open a ticket on the matter, then I just get a response pointing me to the developer API guide.

I don't have any questions about the coding, or development, I just need someone at Paypal to enable the Payouts API in the live environment for my account.

Can anyone help me on this as I am banging my head against a wall everytime I call Paypal.

[ggopaul]

Hello...
I am facing same problem!
Did you got a solution Sir?

[CompileUKLtd]

same problem here. anyone have any idea/resolution yet?

[Domhnall]

Exact same problem here.

The account section (https://developer.paypal.com/developer/accountStatus) has an 'Enable' link, which just reveals a contact us button.

Reading the Payouts documentation elsewhere (https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payouts/#enable-payouts) suggests that I should navigate to this page, click the 'Enable' link then "fill in the questionnaire".  But I am not seeing any questionnaire.  Instead I just see the Contact Us button which leads to a not-very-helpful help section.

In the screenshot above, there is also a link to customer service.  This just links to the help centre which is, ironically, not very helpful.

Any other people having these issues??

[PayPal_paula]

Hi all, 

I think your best option would be to try posting this on our merchant community forum as this would be more aimed at developing and technical support. Here is where you can find in Merchant community https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Merchant-Integration-Technical/ct-p/mts?profile.language=en. 

I hope this helps

Paula 

[Domhnall]

Thanks Paula.

Just to follow up on this.  I was passed around a number of departments, but eventually got talking to someone who seemed to know what I was talking about.  I was informed that we would not be able to access this Payouts API.

Apparently, this would require Mass Payments to be enabled on our account, but this can only be enabled for existing and established customers who are consistently hitting a certain volume of PayPal transactions (>£6K for last 6 months, I think was mentioned).

From our perspective, we are not an established customer and do not use PayPal to collect payments from our users.  We wanted to integrate PayPal to make use of this 'payout' functionality only. From the brief conversation I had with the merchant team, this is not an option.

Why? I may have misunderstood something here, but the reason given to me was as follows: The payouts business is not a profitable one for PayPal. They offer the functionality as a convenience to their established customers (i.e. people they are already making money from via other workflows). They have no interest in supporting this functionality for smaller customers, as it is not deemed worthwhile. This seems strange to me ... just change your price point to make it worthwhile and offer discounts to established customers.  Just my opinion.

I am replying here in case it is useful to someone else looking into this.  It took me a loooooong time to get answers on this, and the restricted nature of the Payouts API (and its relationship to Mass Payments) is not made clear in the documentation.

From my perspective, it has led to a fair amount of wasted effort and back to the drawing board.