tl;dr: We want your feedback on Magento + PayPal integration. Comment here, email me, or chat over at /r/Magento.
It’s no secret that PayPal has been, is, and continues to be an important part of Magento’s value to eBay Enterprise. The benefit extends to the merchants which provide PayPal payment methods to their customers, as there are plenty of data which demonstrate improved conversion rates with the Express Checkout shortcut in addition to a mosaic of other benefits when various PayPal methods and options are added to the mix
So, the benefits are real. From my past experience as a full time developer though I recall a couple of pain points. For example, PayPal’s various payment methods had unclear naming conventions as well as uncertain regional and functional limitations. It was therefore hard to know which PayPal payment method(s) to recommend for clients. I also recall some pain points with the integration itself (especially when IPN was involved). There are several discussions online which indicate that integration difficulties exist for others as well.
I’m happy to report that the landscape for both PayPal as well as the Magento + PayPal integration has been improving. Within the last year and a half PayPal has stepped up their game in terms of internal tech, account provisioning, and ease of sandbox testing. (Sidebar: PayPal even has a Head of Open Source and an entire suite of open source libraries. Add Braintree to the mix, and it’s clear that developers are a focus for the new PayPal.) And as a member of Magento’s Small Business team, I can also share that there is dedicated, ongoing effort to understand and resolve integration issues. This effort along with effort from Magento’s Product team have resulted in improvements to Magento’s integration as well as improvements among various third-party checkout integrations in order to fix and optimize Magento’s PayPal checkout flow.
However, we want to ensure that we understand any lingering issues as well as issues which were resolved by an upgrade. We’re also eager to hear about any Magento + PayPal success stories. So, please share your Magento + PayPal experiences with me via email, leave a comment on this post, or chat over at Reddit on /r/Magento. The experiences which you all share with me will directly affect Magento’s success now and in the future. I will likely keep emails and comments internal to eBay, so feel free to get deep but please don’t post credentials or anything sensitive. I may not be able to send a personal response to everyone, but please know that all of your messages will be used for the benefit of Magento and PayPal. Also, we may follow up with you to get more information about your experience.
My comments are based on my experience running Payflow, Express over my past 6 years as a Magento developer.
The Payflow gateway *itself* is truly awful. 20-30 second API responses are a regular occurance. Rejections and declines based on eBay buyer history. Random email address rejections. Random API outages. These are all issues I’ve never experienced with Authorize.
Another pain point is the Paypal App, website, and Magento API do not allow use of the two-factor auth. If you use 2fa you cannot use the Paypal app. If you use 2fa you have to log in THREE times on the website. If you use 2fa you can’t log in from with in the Magento Admin panel to have the easy account setup. This is a bit messy and basically obviates us from suggesting that 2fa should be set up by default on merchant accounts.
The backend experience and reporting tools are sluggish, outdated, and incredibly frustrating for end users to use. The redesign has made things worse by layering on top terrible UX (click to scroll even on desktop) and hiding advanced options 6 menus deep. I had to Google to find where to add the IPN endpoint now. Hint: it’s not where the Paypal Developer docs say it is.
So – as you can see – none of these pain points have anything to do with Magento’s integration. Historically the integration has been incredibly plug and play with very little issue save for a few common requests. Some common requests I field are “why can’t we add a coupon from the Paypal Express site”. Another (removing the review step) was addressed in the most recent version of Magento. So I think that there *is* progress.
Another problem is an issue in the community at-large – Paypal BN (affiliate) codes are starting to sneak into module vendor and theme vendors in the form of innocuous modules. These BN codes are taking affiliate commission from Paypal sales even though it’s just a plain old module installed from Connect.
Anyhow – my $0.02 is that the Magento side of things is generally OK as it is but everything beyond Magento is painful and frustrating.