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Hi Michael, Yes, indeed the issue was fixed around mid October. But since yesterday, December 15 (and maybe 14), the exact same problem is back. Fortunately I left my workaround intact ("member-id" transferred in the parameter "item_number" to identify the customer), but the other additional parameters are lost again. Let's hope a PayPal employee who reads this will be triggered by the dates the problem appeared, disappeared and appeared again, and recognize the change that caused this error. Good luck, Lex (IChingOnline)   ... View more

And indeed, today I had a complaint from a member of my site that he paid for one year subscription on last August 3, but nothing happened. I found out that on August 3 for three subscription payments there were no payment confirmation e-mails. So now I have to look once a day in my PayPal account if possibly there were payments made of which I was not notified by PayPal. I'm afraid that there is nothing left for me to do then find an alternative payment platform. Where is the PayPal employee in this platform who knows what is happening?   ... View more

Hello Chiranjeevi,   I am happy to see a PayPal employee with a reply to the problem with the PayPal Buy Now-button that I have. I know that Buy Now buttons are deprecated. I know about all the documentation that you mention, and I have applied every detail of it. It has been working fine for many years, but last month the button did not work any more as before: No details any more in the payment confirmation e-mail; no push notification of the payment in the PayPal app any more. And yes, I have created a MTS ticket with all the details, which they could not solve. Please have a look at the link below, with the reported problem in the MTS Community where I explained the situation and posted an (ugly) workaround that at least keeps me "alive". Thanks for your reply in advance, LvdBos (IChingOnline) HTML forms, missing additional data (on0, os0, etc... - PayPal Community (paypal-community.com)  ... View more

I have implemented a workaround that works specifically for me, although you may also make use of it, as I will explain. It is an ugly workaround, but nevertheless it keeps me "alive". In the PayPal developer pages you can read that buttons like Buy Now, Donate, Add to cart are "depricated". PayPal will not solve any problem with these buttons any more. They want you to upgrade to a business account and use their new (complicated) Checkout solution. But who garantees me that this will solve my problem? Once upgraded, don't expect to ever be able to downgrade again. My workaround: In the payment confirmation e-mail I noticed that two parameters from the Buy Now button "survive" and are available in the confirmation e-mail. These are "item_name" and "item_number". These two are meant for the object that you sell, with a constant value (like "item_name": Umbrella, and "item_number": 435) The second "item_number" is optional, and I use it to transfer (dynamically) the "member-id" of my customer, which I need to identify who made the payment. The only setback is that this only works with unencrypted button code. The PayPal encryption cannot handle a variable value for both "item_name" or "item_number"; it encrypts the constant value of the button code. But I do not see a problem with unencrypted as yet. Of course anyone can "mess" with an unencrypted code, but for what? If the amount payed is not enough, the buyer will simply not receive anything. If you like, you can concatenate several parameters in both "item_name" and "item_number", to have them available in your payment confirmation e-mail where you can split them apart again. For me "member-id" transferred in the parameter "item_number" is enough to identify the customer; I don't need more than one parameter. Now my payment confirmation e-mail starts with: "Object number:" followed by the member-id of my customer; and I am done. But yet another setback is: how long will this work? I would not be surprised if some day I will not even get a payment confirmation e-mail any more. Keep searching for a better sulution, and publish it here. ... View more

Hi Michael, At least I am happy to find someone with exactly the same problem! I have at my site a PayPal "Buy Now"-button, where I have added some code to the button-form with the member-id of my logged-in member in the optional parameters "on1" and "os1", to be able to retrieve the member in my database. This member-id was always available in the payment confirmation e-mail and it has been working fine for many years already. Needless to say that the code did not change recently. At first I hoped the problem was temporary, it started on July 11, and July 14 there was one single payment confirmation e-mail where the optional parameters were suddenly available for once, but ever since it is not working any more. Since then I have to try and match the payment by e-mailaddress, but this is often different from the e-mailaddress that my customer used to register at my site. (If different, this match can take me an hour, if possible at all, with my almost 20.000 registered members.) There is a list at https://developer.paypal.com/api/nvp-soap/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/Appx-websitestandard-htmlvariables/  with deprecated HTML-variables, but on0, os0, on1, os1 etc. are not in this list.   Another change since July 11 is that my PayPal app does not receive push-notifications any more, after a payment has been made. This was always very handy, because I have a particular ringtone in the app that tells me that I should do what the customer has payed for. Again needless to say that I did not change any setting.   I have reported the problem to PayPal Customer support on July 16; they answered the same day that the question was too technical for them and told me to contact Merchant Technical Support at https://www.paypal-support.com/, which I did. This MTS replied "Unfortunately, my team and I do not have access to the tools available to troubleshoot this issue." and referred back to Customer Support, by clicking "Contact Us" on the https://www.paypal.com/smarthelp/contact-us/ site. At this PayPal page, clicking "Contact Us" always opens the PayPal Assistent pop-up screen, that will of course take you nowhere. Then I made a half hour phone-call with a very friendly helpdesk employee, who admitted that MTS should have said they just cannot help, instead of referring back to Customer Support and he could only advise to try the PayPal Community(!!!)   So here we are. (Unfortunately I do not know of any alternative payment method for international small payments.) Should I find a solution, I will of course publish it here. (If it is not yet solved by PayPal, or maybe someone else came up with a solution.)   ... View more