Instant Payment Notification (IPN) is a message service that automatically notifies merchants of events related to PayPal transactions. Merchants can use it to automate back-office and administrative functions, like fulfilling orders and providing customers with order status.
Applicable Use Cases
How it works
Merchants enter in their PayPal profile a URL they established on their website where they want to receive automated notice of transaction-related events. When customers pay for goods or services, PayPal sends a secure FORM POST containing payment information to the URL. The IPN service detects and processes IPN messages with a listener, sometimes called a handler. The listener is a custom script or program that resides on the merchant’s website. It waits for messages, validates them with PayPal, and passes them to various back-office applications.
Why use Instant Payment Notification
Instant Payment Notification (IPN) notifies merchants almost instantly about transaction events, such as:
- Payments received, including Express Checkout, and Adaptive Payments.
- Credit card authorizations.
- eCheck payments and related pending, completed, or denied status events.
- Recurring payments and subscription actions.
- Chargebacks, disputes, reversals, and refunds.
Merchants can act based on the information they receive. For example, they can:
- Update their inventory.
- Email a purchase confirmation.
- Trigger order fulfillment.
- Enable download of digital media.
- Update their customer list.
- Email a shipping notification.
- Issue a refund.
- Update accounting-related information.
Using IPN in your checkout flow
Although PayPal usually processes IPN messages immediately, IPN is not synchronized with actions on your website. Internet connectivity is not always 100% reliable and IPN messages can be lost or delayed. The IPN service automatically resends messages until the listener acknowledges them. The service resents messages for up to 4 days.
Because IPN is not a real-time service, your checkout flow should not wait for the IPN message before it is allowed to complete. If the checkout flow is dependent on receiving an IPN message, processing can be delayed by system load or other reasons. Configure your checkout flow to handle a possible delay.
Because IPN is not a real-time service, your checkout flow should not wait for the IPN message before it is allowed to complete. If the checkout flow is dependent on receiving an IPN message, processing can be delayed by system load or other reasons. Configure your checkout flow to handle a possible delay.
How to get started
- Check your account status. Login to PayPal. Go to your PayPal Profile and click My settings. Confirm that your “Account type” is either Premier or Business, or upgrade your account.
- Check your API settings. Click My selling tools. Expand “Selling online” if needed and check “API access.” Click Update and Add or edit API permission or View API signature.
- In your PayPal Profile, click My selling tools, click Instant Payment Notification. Follow the instructions to enable your IPN including entering your Notification URL.
- To create a basic IPN listener script, information is available in the following document: How To Process Instant Payment Notification Messages.
- Install your script on your website at the Notification URL you specified in your PayPal Profile.
- Test your script using the PayPal Sandbox. (Registration is free.)
- Once you’ve verified that your implementation works correctly in the Sandbox, you’re now ready to go live.
U.S. fees
There are no fees for Instant Payment Notification.
International availability and fees
You can use Instant Payment Notification in any country where PayPal is accepted.
There are fees for currency conversion and to receive payments from another country.
There are fees for currency conversion and to receive payments from another country.
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