PayPal APIs: Up and Running

Chapter 2. PayPal Express Checkout

Express Checkout is PayPal’s premier checkout solution. It allows a customer to check out on your site, log into his PayPal account, and purchase your goods or services. Express Checkout puts PayPal in charge of data security with regard to the customer’s billing and credit card information and removes that liability from the merchant. In this chapter, we will look at generic versus Express Checkout workflows, Express Checkout API operations, a simple Express Checkout integration, as well as an in-depth integration method.

Checkout Process Workflows

Let’s start by looking at the process flow of a typical checkout and an Express Checkout.

Generic Checkout Workflow

Figure 2-1 shows the typical checkout flow a user experiences when buying goods or services online, which includes the following steps:

1. Customer clicks the checkout button on your shopping cart page.

2. Customer enters all shipping information.

3. Customer chooses her payment method and provides all the relevant billing and payment information.

4. Customer reviews order and pays.

5. Customer receives her order confirmation.

As you can see, this typical checkout method requires the customer to provide a lot of information at the time of purchase. This is where PayPal’s Express Checkout can be a real time saver for your customers.

Figure 2-1. Generic checkout workflow

Express Checkout Workflow

Figure 2-2 shows the ...