Paypal Sandbox: recurring payments being held

[cmkl]

I am setting up my shopping cart to use Express Checkout and Web Payments Standard (doesn't seem to matter which). I have a sandbox business account and have turned IPN notifications on and have input the URL that my shopping cart expects. The IPNs get sent. When I look at the transaction details for all of my checkout orders, I see that the payment status is 'Pending' and the payment is on hold. There's a note that says "We're taking a closer look at this payment. It's required for some payments and normally takes up to 3 business days. Don't ship until we tell you it's ok."

Meanwhile in my shopping cart log I see an array of data that Paypal has sent as the IPN. But I also see a 400 error message.

The shopping cart app considers the order to be 'pending' and doesn't have a completion date.

It seems like I am missing something obvious. Can anyone say why test payments would be put on hold?

[MTS_Jennifer · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Thank you for Posting to the PayPal Sandbox Community.

Here are two possibilities, IPNs is not turned on in the Sandbox account and Payment Review is enabled.

Here are the steps to ensure that Payment Review is disabled:

1. Log into the developer dashboard at https://developer.paypal.com
2. Click Accounts under Sandbox
3. Click the three dots under Manage Accounts
4. Click View/Edit Account
5. Click Settings tab
6. Make sure that Payment Review and Negative testing is set to Off

Also log into your Sandbox account at https://sandbox.paypal.com, turn on IPNs and add the IPN listener URL.

1. Log in to https://sandbox.paypal.com
2. Navigate to your Profile (to the left of logout)
3. Click on Account Settings
4. Click Notifications under Business Profile
5. In this page, find the "Instant Payment Notifications" option and click the "Update" button/link.
6. Click "Choose IPN Settings" to specify your listener's URL and activate the listener.
7. Specify the Default URL for your listener in the Notification URL field.
8. Choose Receive IPN messages (Enabled) to enable your listener.
9. Click Save.

Thank you,

Jennifer

PayPal

[cmkl]

I had not turned off 'review payments' in the developer account. I had activated IPNs. But this is a big step forward because now Paypal and my shopping cart are talking properly. IPN gets sent with 'completed' information and then the shopping cart marks the order as completed.

Thank you so much Jennifer for replying. I still have some work to do on the shopping cart but this is a big step forward.