Check if paypal email address is a verified user

Question

I would like to check if a paypal user who tries to buy something from my site has a verified account before he makes purchase.

Once the user isn't verified, any payment he/she makes would fail. Funds will be returned back to user automatically.

Is there any code I can add or edit to make this work due to fraud issues.

Well I found this

https://www.paypal.com/us/verified/pal=emailhere

where if i replace emailhere with any email i get verified or unverified.

I would like to add this to the code. Thanks

Answer 1

If you're not already, I would recommend using the Express Checkout API. This will allow you to check the payer status prior to finalizing the payment.

The SetExpressCheckout API would generate your token that you use to redirect the user to PayPal with. They would then sign in, review the order, and click continue which would send them back to your site.

At that point, you can call GetExpressCheckoutDetails to obtain all the buyer details including their verified status.

To finalize the whole thing you would call DoExpressCheckoutPayment. In cases where the payer is not verified, though, you could simply stop the flow and leave this call out. No payment will have taken place so no refund would be necessary. You can simply display a message that they need to verify their account prior to making purchases from you.

If you happen to be working with PHP I would recommend taking a look at my class library for PayPal. It makes all of this very simple for you.