Support for PayFlow Pro

Matt W.'s Avatar

Matt W.

Feb 15, 2010 @ 04:10 PM

I'd love to see support for PayPal (was VeriSign) Payflow Pro gateway.

  1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Marc Guyer on Feb 15, 2010 @ 04:39 PM

    Marc Guyer's Avatar

    I was very familiar with Payflow Pro when it was VeriSign. Since it's now PayPal, I believe they may put some restrictions on it's use, like requiring paypal's 'express checkout' as a payment option. That's weird and annoying. It might not be the case. Paypal's offerings are quite confusion on the surface. As I understand it, "Website Payments Pro" really is just payflow pro. Website Payments Pro requires that you make 'express checkout' an option on your "checkout" page. CG isn't a POS system which is what "express checkout" is for. In short, paypal's standard offering is not compatible with CG. In other words, you can't currently execute recurring transactions against a traditional paypal account.

    Ok, enough rambling. If it's still possible to use Payflow Pro in a "stand-alone" way (and offers something analogous to the Authorize.Net CIM), then it would certainly get bumped up on our list of gateways to support.

  2. 2 Posted by Matt W on Feb 15, 2010 @ 05:18 PM

    Matt W's Avatar

    PayFlow Pro is a different product from Webiste Payments Pro.

    PayFlow has a fairly robust and low-level API available in a number of programming languages. I've used it to build a recurring payment system which is still in service, so I know it can be done.

    Though PayPal doesn't seem to push PayFlow much from a marketing standpoint, the VeriSign product was very successful and, I imagine, still has a very large number of subscribers. Freshbooks, for example, supports it.

  3. Support Staff 3 Posted by Marc Guyer on Feb 15, 2010 @ 07:48 PM

    Marc Guyer's Avatar

    I stand corrected. The line between the two is blurry but they're definitely different.

    I looked all over but couldn't find any evidence of a cardholder data vault service (something like the authnet CIM) provided with the payflow gateway.

  4. 4 Posted by Matt Wiseley on Feb 16, 2010 @ 01:58 AM

    Matt Wiseley's Avatar

    You can create new transactions based on previous transaction IDs and the
    cardholder data will be reused. Unfortunately you can only do that for 1
    year after the source transaction, making an annual payment problematic.
    Didn't realize you were relying on merchant service storage of cardholder
    data.

    Matt

  5. Support Staff 5 Posted by Marc Guyer on Feb 16, 2010 @ 03:28 PM

    Marc Guyer's Avatar

    I discovered the reference txn id method yesterday but couldn't find much
    info about it. The 1 year limit makes a big difference. Right now, we
    handle for expired cards nicely but with payflow pro, using the reference id
    method, we would have to accommodate another contingency. A similar one,
    yes, but different nevertheless.

    I'm also not sure about the future of payflow pro. Paypal's moneymaker is
    the express checkout style. They don't want their customers to use credit
    cards directly. They want them to use paypal accounts. That leads me to
    believe that payflow will become more and more obscure.

  6. Marc Guyer closed this discussion on Apr 12, 2010 @ 03:48 PM.

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