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Adding Shipwire fulfillment to your PayPal Cart, Buy Now buttons, or for use with EBay via PayPal is easy! In all cases, you first need to configure PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) to notify Shipwire when you make a sale. IPN is how PayPal communicates to 3^rd party carts, or fulfillment providers that a transaction is complete.  
Adding Shipwire fulfillment to your PayPal Cart, Buy Now buttons, or for use with EBay via PayPal is easy! In all cases, you first need to configure PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) to notify Shipwire when you make a sale. IPN is how PayPal communicates to 3^rd party carts, or fulfillment providers that a transaction is complete.  

This page includes 3 main topics:  

Setup – Have Shipwire handle fulfillment for PayPal IPN requests by completing the following instructions:

1. First Setup PayPal IPN

2. Setup Shipwire

• Log in to your Shipwire account
• Click the Sell tab, and add the PayPal selling tool
• Click the PayPal selling tool
• Select the IPN Notification tab
• Add your PayPal email address, then click “Save”.

3. Now test your IPN Configuration (see below)

PayPal Shopping Cart

Shipwire PayPal IPN connection also works with the PayPal Shopping Cart system. Please note that your Shipwire SKU must be inserted in to the item_number fields to process the correct SKU. That is all you need to do!.  

PayPal Buy Now buttons

Setup your PayPal Buy Now buttons.  

EBay Auctions using IPN

Setup your with IPN.

Tips to test your PayPal IPN setting

The simplest way to test your IPN configuration is to use a PayPal Buy Now button to quickly send an order to Shipwire. Follow these steps to test PayPal IPN:  

1. Login to your Shipwire account and go to the PayPal IPN sell tool.
2. Click on the Shipwire PayPal Buy Now Buttons tab
3. Highlight one of your products
4. Check the sell parameters and set a price, and shipping price (Use $1 to keep the funds transferred to a minimum), and shipping amount
5. Make sure you enter the correct PayPal email address as you use for your IPN configuration.
6. We automatically create a button you can use to purchase your product. Click the “Buy Now” button. This will transition you to PayPal where you can complete your purchase.
7. Login to a separate PayPal account to pay for your test purchase.
   IMPORTANT: You must use a different PayPal account to pay for your purchase than you use to take Payments. PayPal does not allow you to use the same account to both make the payment, and to accept the payment. You will need a PayPal account for testing, or maybe have a friend help you test.

After you purchase you should see your order in your Shipwire account within a few minutes to an hour. If you do see your orders then your IPN configuration is ready.  

If you don’t several things could be wrong:  

• PayPal IPN is not configured correctly. Double check your IPN configuration. Be sure to follow the setup instructions carefully.
• You used a different PayPal account to send payment to than your IPN is configured on. Be sure the PayPal email address on the Buy Now page is the same as the IPN configuration page.
• You set your SKU name differently than in your Shipwire Account. This is not likely if you use the button that we generate. If you code your own Buy Now button then the SKU must exactly match your Shipwire SKU name.
• Your SKU may not have any sort of pending or real inventory. For Checkout to work and Shipwire to register your order your SKU past to us needs to have either pending, good, or past good inventory. If you can’t see your SKU listed in the Manage Inventory screen then we can’t create an order for it.

Be sure to review the FAQ’s below for more information that can assist you…  

PayPal IPN FAQs

Here is a collection of other tips and FAQ’s to assist you in using your PayPal account with Shipwire.  

Q – What if I want to use PayPal IPN, but I don’t want Shipwire to handle all my products?  

A – If you use PayPal IPN, all your orders are sent to Shipwire regardless of origin. This means that unintended orders may will also be sent to Shipwire, with products that Shipwire may not recognize. To handle these situations, go into your Account Settings and edit your Shipping Preferences. Here you can set orders with unknown products to be rejected, held, or shipped with just the products that Shipwire recognizes. Shipwire also will ignore orders automatically that are a result of 3^rd party carts, or with parameters passed that are not valid.  

Q — I am using my IPN configuration to notify Shipwire of a sale. Can I also use it with my 3^rd party cart?  

A — No, IPN can only be used with a single cart or fulfillment provider. In general if you use PayPal to take payments for a 3^rd party cart then you must configure PayPal IPN to notify your cart. Then the cart will notify Shipwire using a separate API call.  

Q — Is it possible to have my cart then call the Shipwire IPN notification URL to pass my order information?  

A — No, this is not possible. As part of the IPN security process our servers verify that the IPN notification comes from PayPal (not your cart). We then call back to PayPal to validate the transaction as being genuine.  

Q — I am using a cart not supported by Shipwire and I use PayPal for payments. Can I use PayPal IPN as a bridge between my cart and Shipwire?  

A — Generally no. As specified in the previous FAQ most carts will use the IPN configuration for their notification. If you do setup the IPN notification URL with the Shipwire IPN notification URL then that will not work as well. Notification via IPN to Shipwire only works under the following three conditions:  

- You are using PayPal Buy Now buttons  

- You are using the PayPal cart  

- You are using PayPal in conjunction with your EBay account (see our EBay sell tool page).  

Q – I got a email notice from PayPal regarding IPN notification failure – now what?  

A – If PayPal contacts our Shipwire PayPal fulfillment URL but the Shipwire account is not configured to respond to PayPal IPN then it will cause an error in PayPal. In that case PayPal will send a note similar to the following to the PayPal account holder:  

Hello <name>,  

Please check your server that handles PayPal Instant Payment Notifications
(IPN). IPNs sent to the following URL(s) are failing:  

https://api.shipwire.com/exec/FulfillmentServices.paypal.php  

If you do not recognize this URL, you may be using a service provider that
is using IPN on your behalf. Please contact your service provider with the
above information. If this problem continues, IPN notification may be disabled for your account.  

Thank you for your prompt attention to this issue.  

Thanks,  

PayPal
There are two possible solutions:  

1 – Configure your Shipwire PayPal IPN sell tool. Usually this means you enter your PayPal email address into the form. It is very simple.  

2 – Remove the Shipwire call back URL from your PayPal IPN account.  

Q — How do I tell PayPal to resend an IPN request for orders I may have missed?  

A — If you find orders on PayPal that are not in your Shipwire account, you can have PayPal resend the IPN request to us for that order. Here is how you do that:  

1 – Login to you PayPal account  

2 – Go to My Account – History – IPN History  

3 – Select in your history the orders you want to resend to us  

4 – Click the Check Box below the “Resend Selected” button  

5 – Click Resend Selected  

This will cause an IPN request to be sent to Shipwire again where we will capture the order. After this you should see you order reappear usually within a few minutes. Review all the orders to be sure they are correct and that there are no duplicates  

Q — What happens if the Shipwire servers are down or otherwise not accessible when a person checks out of my PayPal account?  

A — PayPal is a very robust service and will re-send IPN requests on a periodic basis until Shipwire has the order.  

Q —What about other Shipwire features like real time rating, carrier selection, inventory and shipment tracking?  

A — At this time PayPal IPN only supports basic order fulfillment.  

Q – My orders in Shipwire don’t include my customer contact phone #, how can I fix that?  

A – By default PayPal  Checkout does not require a contact phone number. If no phone # is provided then the order will be passed to Shipwire without it. In that case we use our support phone 650-561-4800. For best results you can configure your PayPal checkout to require the contact phone #. To do this follow these steps:  

1 – Login to your PayPal account  

2 – Go to “My Account – Profile”  

3 – In the “Selling Online” section click on Update for “Website Preferences”  

4 – In the “Contact Telephone Number” section select that a phone # is required.  

Q – How do I enable PayPal Checkout for shipping types?  

A – When PayPal is used for checkout with Buy Now buttons or the PayPal shopping cart you can enable PayPal to provide a shipping service type. PayPal only supports generic service types and provides several methods to calculate shipping rates. There is no direct integration support for specific carriers or with Shipwire Real Time Rating.  

To enable PayPal shipping types at the time of checkout do the following:  

1 – Login to your PayPal account  

2 – Go to “My Account”  

3 – Select “My Selling Tools”  

4 – Click on “Shipping Calculations”  

Follow the steps to set this up. This will allow you to setup your shipping preferences for both domestic and international shipping.  

PayPal supports a number of generic shipping types. These are mapped to appropriate Shipwire service levels. These are:  

‘PayPal Shipping Service Type’ Shipwire Service Level

If there is no carrier provided or there is not a match then we assume GD shipping.  

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Why PayPal?

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With over 140 million worldwide, PayPal is a popular payment method and one of the global leaders in online payments.  

It’s a fast and secure way to pay online via all major debit and credit cards, online bank transfers and via payments from PayPal account holders. Simply email your customers an invoice containing a PayPal button. Customers can then pay you in a few convenient clicks. PayPal is affordable for businesses of all sizes.  

Need to accept payments simply and quickly  

PayPal is an easy and secure way for your customers to pay online — Set up can be completed in as little as a few minutes.  

Get paid quickly
Get paid faster and offer your customers convenience and flexibility with PayPal.  

Accept multiple payment options  

You have the option to pay with all major credit and debit cards, bank transfer and PayPal balance. You can also receive payment from over 190 countries and regions around the world and in 17 currencies.

Multi user access  

Use the PayPal Business account to create multiple logins and access levels, so your employees can complete necessary tasks without having access to extraneous features. PayPal’s Multi-User Access feature lets you give PayPal account access to up to 200 employees, each with a unique login ID and level of authority.