Storing credit cards in the vault using NVPs

[advlaser]

We would like to store our customers credit cards in the paypal vault using NVP's. I'm looking for more information on how to do that using NVP's. Some examples of how to store the card number and how to do a sale, pre-auth and post-auth with NVP's would be great. I've seen some HTTP examples in the vault overview, but NVP examples would be great.

Also is there a time limit for how long the card will be valid in the vault?

[angelleye]

The "vault" is what you would use with the REST APIs.  If you want to stick with NVP you'll need to use Reference Transactions.  The procedure for this will be a little different depending on what version of PayPal Pro you're using, which would be required to do the direct credit card processing.  Are you already setup with Pro?  If so, do you know if you're on "Website Payments Pro 3.0" or "Payments Pro 2.0"?

[advlaser]

I'm not sure what version of Paypal Pro we are on. How do you tell? We are proceeding with the project storing the credit cards as reference transactions. Assuming a reference transaction is stored for a year, if you charge a card via a reference transaction, will the PNREF that is returned also be good for another year? or can you only use the original reference transaction to make future charges?

[angelleye]

I'm pretty sure the new PNREF can be used for the next year, but you should definitely test in the sandbox prior to going live. Just make sure you can use the new PNREF to make a new Reference Transaction, for example.

[advlaser]

I've been working to implement reference transactions as my solution to store credit cards with paypal, but I've come up with a snag. According to the documentation, "only one Delayed Capture transaction is allowed per Authorization". In my case we always do a Preauth and Postauth. If I use the PNREF from the original authorization, that will work great for the first transaction, but what about subsequent transactions? Can I use the PNREF resulting from the post-auth?

[angelleye]

I'm not sure I fully understand your situation here. Can you walk me through your order procedure / workflow?

[advlaser]

It turns out I was going about it completely wrong. I've decided to ditch NVP and reference transactions and use the Rest API and the paypal vault to store my credit cards. I was under the misconception that I could do multiple charges off one reference transaction. 

[angelleye]

Well, the vault in REST is essentially the same thing as reference transactions in Classic. So, I guess I'm still a little unsure what your end goal is here, but if it's basically to store the card details at PayPal so that you can use them for future payments, then either one would do that for you.