PayPal recurring payment profile initial payment delayed

Question

We are creating billing agreements for customers to access our online service. We are using the REST api to create the agreement like this: Initial payment of $10, 1 month trial period ($0), Monthly $10 fee starting after trial

We expect that the "initial payment" should be charged immediately so we can give the customer access to the service. Sometimes (during business hours it seems), the profile is created and the initial payment is charged immediately. However, we see many customers (usually in the middle of the night) placed in a PENDING state. The profile is created, but the initial payment is not charged until many hours later. Origin does not seem to matter - they are a mix of US and international.

Recurring Payments: Profile Details via - Express Checkout

Pending

Customer xxxxx xxxxxxxxx Verified | [email protected]

Profile start date Mar 2, 2015 | Profile ID I-xxxxxxxxxxx

This example was created this morning. We have not received the initial payment yet, and don't expect to until this afternoon. What is Pending and why is the initial payment delayed many hours? Is it possible to setup a billing agreement so that the "initial payment" is charged immediately?

Answer 1

I am having this exact same issue. By tracking our website orders vs the IPN, I've concluded the following: orders made between 10:00 UTC and approx 15:00 UTC do not get processed immediately (regardless of whether they ultimately complete or fail), but seem to end up in a batch/queue. We finally get the IPNs for all the orders placed between these times anywhere from 14:30 UTC to 15:30 UTC.

Any orders placed after 15:00 resume to send the IPN back relatively quickly.

For anyone processing digital goods (as we do) this is unacceptable. This means orders can be delayed up to 5 hours!

I have a ticket open with PayPal to resolve, and I encourage anyone experiencing this to do the same.