The PayPal site is improving, as is their service, but there are still a lot of things that aren’t made clear.

When does the buyer need a PayPal account?

A recently cleared up confusion I had was over whether a buyer had to have a PayPal account or not. For a while, I thought it was only Website Payment Pro (WPP) accounts that could take payments without the buyer having to have a PayPal account but as James recently pointed out on the bookwhen help pages, it’s simpler than that:

PayPal Business accounts (Standard & Pro) can accept payments without the buyer having a PayPal account. The buyer has to spot the tiny continue link however.

PayPal Personal accounts cannot. The buyer will see ‘Sign up for a PayPal account and continue checkout’ where the card logos and continue link normally are.

Can I use Maestro with Recurring Payments?

Another issue I had recently was with the new MasterCard Compliance rules making it compulsory to use 3D Secure when taking Maestro/Switch/Solo payments. This has unfortunately made it impossible to take a PayPal Pro Recurring Payment using these card types. PayPal help desk confirmed this. The WPP integration guide (pdf link) Chapter 15 page 122 confirms this:

3-D Secure is not supported for direct Recurring Billing and Reference Transactions. Cards that require 3-D Secure authentication cannot use these APIs; however, cards where 3-D Secure is optional can continue to process transactions without authentication. If you use either of these features in your current integration, you must exclude the Maestro card type from the available options.

Maestro and Solo are the same.