Paypal, Recurring Billing, and ActiveMerchant

Question

I\'m trying to research how to add a subscription based pay model on an existing site of mine, but am running into a lot of conflicting information and caused me to be a bit los

Answer 1

Express Checkout is the same as Website Payments Standard. It is the method of redirecting your customers to PayPal to collect their payment info. There's a simple implementation of just creating a form that posts directly to PayPal, and you can optionally use IPN to get info about the transaction. There's also an API for Payments Standard, that lets you set up the transaction with PayPal behind the scenes, then redirect your customer to PayPal, then query PayPal via the API for details on the just-completed transaction. The SaaS Rails Kit (I'm the author of it) uses this API.

Website Payments Pro is PayPal's offering that lets you collect the payment info at your site and pass that info via their API to PayPal. You then get information about the transaction via the API. The customer never leaves your site. PayPal's TOS require you to offer Express Checkout even if you offer Payments Pro. Payments Pro costs $30 / mo. (as I recall) and requires you to fill out an application for a Pro account.