在令牌在3小时内到期后1天后授权和处理付款

Question

I'm using the paypal classic API to authorize and process a payment using Express Checkout (https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/express-checkout/ht_ec-singleAuthPayment-curl-etc/).

Although the authorization is valid for three days according to the documentation, the token expires within three hours.

So, how can I capture the transaction after the token has expired?

PS. I'm aware this is a duplicate of How am I supposed to capture a payment 1 day after its authorization if the PayPal token expires after 3 hours? but like the questioning user, the 'DoExpressCheckoutPayment' could be done after the three hour period.

Answer 1

Both the poster of the referenced question and you are making the same mistake in understanding the PayPal concepts.

A token and an authorization are not the same thing at all. A token is a mechanism to connect a user agreement to an upcoming financial transaction; think of it as an extension to or part of a web session. A token describes an in-process action, and can be used to generate a financial transaction, but IS NOT a financial transaction itself.

An authorization is one type of financial transaction that could be generated from that token/session. An authorization reserves funds from a buyer, thus giving the seller/receiver a guarantee that funds will be available from the buyer for a certain period of time. It does not actually move funds; that only happens when (if) a second financial transaction is executed in reference to the authorization: a "capture." In short, an authorization & capture split a "sale" into two pieces: one that ensures the transaction can occur, and a second that actually makes it happen.

You should be executing DoExpressCheckout with paymentaction of "authorization" as soon as the user returns (well, perhaps after another page or two on your site... but not days later). Then you throw away the EC token and just keep the authorization #. The only action that you should be performing days later should be a capture, which only requires that authorization #.

I'm guessing that fulfilling the customer's order in some fashion, either digitally or physically, is the cause of the delay before you capture.

If you want to avoid holding funds in the customer's account, and are willing to accept some risk that the funds will therefore not be present when you go to capture, you could also use paymentaction of 'order' to do what amounts to a non-binding authorization at the time of the buyer's interaction.

If you have a more complex situation, e.g. the amount is not known at the time of the user's interaction session, then rather than using an authorization you need to use a different PayPal product such as reference transactions/billing agreements/future payments that permit the user to grant you a more open-ended permission to bill them in the futur.