Thread

I’m running into similar issues with the country code and currency parameters. The problem seems to be that PayPal completely ignores them. It’s “US” and “US dollars” no matter what you submit.

Hey Robert.  We’ve just split this thread off and into technical support so that we can help you get it resolved.  Could I ask you to re-contextualize this for us and we’ll get right on it.

Can you paste the purchase tag you’re using and link to an example of it?  First thing is to see if it’s being sent to paypal properly.  If it is- then we’d need to figure out why paypal is ignoring it.

I was trying to pre-populate the Paypal form with address information collected on my site. First, I added some hidden fields inside the Simplecommerce tags. The code generated by the SimpleCommerce tags looked correct to me, but the country field was not getting set on the Paypal form. Next, I then stripped out the Simplecommerce tags and used the basic “Buy Now” form code described on the Paypal developer site and in the Paypal Hacks book. The problem still happened so it isn’t Simplecommerce.

Here is the Simple Commerce code:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="store_items"}
{exp:simple_commerce:purchase country_code="CA" entry_id="{entry_id}" success="site/success" cancel="site/index"}
{title}
<strong>{item_sale_price}</strong>

{/exp:simple_commerce:purchase}
{/exp:weblog:entries}

This is the Paypal form code with the same problems:

<FORM ACTION="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" METHOD="POST">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="cmd" VALUE="_ext-enter">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="redirect_cmd" VALUE="_xclick">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="business" VALUE="[email protected]">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="item_name" VALUE="hat">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="item_number" VALUE="123">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="amount" VALUE="15.00">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="shipping" VALUE="1.00">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="shipping2" VALUE="0.50">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="currency_code" VALUE="CAD">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="first_name" VALUE="John">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="last_name" VALUE="Doe">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="address1" VALUE="9 Elm Street">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="address2" VALUE="Apt 5">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="city" VALUE="Acity">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="state" VALUE="BC">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="country" VALUE="CA">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="zip" VALUE="19312">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="lc" VALUE="CA">
<!-- EMAIL FIELD COMMENTED OUT FOR REASON MENTIONED BELOW
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="email" VALUE="[email protected]">
-->
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="night_phone_a" VALUE="610">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="night_phone_b" VALUE="555">
<INPUT TYPE="image" SRC="http://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/x-click-but01.gif" BORDER="0" NAME="submit" ALT=Make payments with PayPal - it's fast, free and secure!>
</FORM>

FYI, Paypal problems I am aware of include:

- It isn’t possible to pre-populate the “country” field on the Paypal billing info screen with anything other than US. That means you have to enter the state and country twice.

- If you enter a non-US address and then go back to update the address later in the Paypal checkout process, the form reverts to “US” so you lose the state/country info again.

- If you pre-populate the “email” field, Paypal shows a login screen instead of the billing info screen. This is confusing but leaving it out forces users to enter their email address twice. (Paypal cookies cause the checkout process to vary in other annoying ways as well.)

- There is only room for one tax line so you can’t separate multiple taxes clearly. Another problem for Canadian companies.

- etc…

There are posts about these issues on Paypal’s forums going back more than a year but still no fixes. Maybe PaypalPro is supposed to solve these issues, but that isn’t available outside the US (and UK?) yet and there is no ETA.

Paypal is great for auction payments but that’s about it as far as I’m concerned.

It would be great to see some other payment gateways integrated with EE - especially ones that allow transactions to be completed without leaving the site. We did this recently using a payment gateway called Beanstream. Unlike Paypal, everything worked as advertised. (BTW, that site is http://www.artevist.com. Think “threadless.com” except that the user-submitted t-shirt designs focus on various activism themes. I may post an introduction once it the site more fully launched.)

Robert

Closing legacy thread.

Really.