EZChain FAQ

EZChain is a simple, easy-to-use module that provides PayPal Chained Payment (Adaptive Payments) functionality. Custom chained payment integrations require advanced programming, specialized skills, and a lot of patience. But EZChain hides all the complexity and advanced API programming so that merchants can simply plug it in and start selling. Under the hood you're getting all the amazing functionality and flexibility of Chained Payments. But on the surface you get a simple plug-and-play module to work with.

What is a Chained Payment?

A Chained Payment (part of the Adaptive Payments suite of APIs) is a clever PayPal invention that allows a merchant to split the revenue from a transaction across multiple PayPal recipients. The customer sees only the merchant (the Primary Receiver) and thinks he is paying only the merchant. But behind the scenes, the payment is being divided up amongst multiple PayPal recipients.

How do I send dynamic values to EZChain?

When you log in and go to the Button/Link Generator you'll see checkboxes labeled "Dynamic" next to many data fields. Whenever you check one of these boxes, the generated HTML (after you click Save & Generate Button) will embed the key-value pair into the URL, and the EZChain database will remember that you have designated that field as dynamic. When your own system generates that URL dynamically, simply change any dynamic value to whatever you want, and that value will be passed to EZChain. Important: Only make fields dynamic when necessary. When values are passed to EZChain via URL they are more susceptible to tampering. When the values are non-dynamic and stored in the EZChain database, they cannot be tampered with. You can mix dynamic values and non-dynamic values in the same button. In other words, some of your field values can be dynamic and others not. Or they can all be dynamic, or all non-dynamic (stored in database). It's up to you.

How much does it cost?

Except for very small transaction fees, EZChain charges no monthly fees, no setup fees, no cancellation fees. We don't require a long-term contract or obligations of any kind. You can begin using EZChain right away and cancel any time.

What is the difference between PayPal transaction fees and EZChain transaction fees?

Since EZChain uses PayPal Chained Payment APIs, standard PayPal transaction fees will always apply. EZChain charges very small transaction fees in addition to standard PayPal fees. View the EZChain fee schedule.

Do I have to get my integration/app approved by PayPal?

Yes, PayPal requires all Chained Payment integrations/applications to go through the approval process and receive an AppID. Without this AppID, your EZChain integration will not work in a Live/Production environment. Please read PayPal's instructions for getting your PayPal Adaptive Payments app approved. While this process is not rocket science, it can be a bit intimidating for a first-timer. If you struggle with it or need help, feel free to contact us. IMPORTANT: If your app requires split preapprovals (chained payments linked to subscriptions), the approval process can take longer. Also you would need to indicate in PayPal's online application that you're applying for Preapproval API permissions. Please understand that this approval process is 100% PayPal and has nothing to do with EZChain. Once you're approved by them, your EZChain transactions will work, as long as you have configured your EZChain values/settings correctly.

How long does the PayPal integration/app approval process take?

If you will be using standard chained payments only, in most cases you will receive an AppID immediately, but sometimes it takes a few days to begin working. This approval is only contingent, and can be revoked if any policy violations are discovered when they review your system. However if you will be using chained preapprovals or chained subscriptions PayPal's approval process takes much longer--perhaps weeks. PayPal's app approval process is not very automated, and sometimes sluggish and disorganized. Most importantly you should check back at Paypal Developer daily, in the My Application section, to see the status and check whether their team has left a question for you. If your app has not been approved (and fully working) within 1 week, we recommend you contact PayPal's Adaptive Payments department, ask them the status, and ask what else you can do to help them. For example, they may be waiting for additional information from you.

In the approval process, what is Step by Step Payment Flows Instructions?

In the PayPal adaptive payments approval submission form, many EZChain users have asked how to fill in Step by Step Payment Flows Instructions and Supply Test Account Name and Password. PayPal is looking for instructions on how to enter your site and buy something via the sandbox. If your site is public and anyone can enter without a login, click the PayPal button, and buy something--simply enter the URL to your page with the button on it. In Supply Test Account Name and Password, just enter "not applicable - public page", or similar. However, if a login and password is required (or some kind of credentials) before customers are able to get to your page with the EZChain button on it, give the URL to the login page, and give them a test username and password. In Step by Step Payment Flows Instructions, describe how to login and how to get to your EZChain button. They need to click the button and complete a sandbox payment in order to approve your app.

I want to use EZChain in my system. Where do I start?

You should create an account (on this site) and create a button through the Button Generator. You may wish to first test your button in the PayPal sandbox. Although we call it a button, it's really just a URL behind an image. The URL is the important part, not the image. In your own system, according to your needs and objectives, the EZChain URL simply needs to be clicked or executed to invoke a chained payment.

Does EZChain support Express Checkout style lightbox?

Yes. Your EZChain implementation can be configured to use the Express Checkout style lightbox process which keeps the customer on your website. The standard process takes the customer away from your site (to PayPal's site), then back to your site at the end. But the lighbox process makes use of an inline "lightbox" popup window so that the customer never leaves your site. This is a nicer user experience and is highly recommended. To implement this, log in and go to your Buttons page. Click the light blue Embedded Page link to the left of your button and a new web page will appear with a button. This web page serves as a live, working template for you to implement lightbox. If you View Source on this page, you'll have an example of how to implement. Copy/paste all this to your own web page and customize as needed. We offer customization and programming services for a fee if you need help.

Can EZChain programmers perform the integration for us into our system?

Our recommended option is to find a developer whose expertise matches the technology that your site or system is built in. For example, if you have a WordPress site, find a WordPress expert. If you have an ASP.NET system, find an ASP.NET expert. And so on. Perhaps you already have a working relationship with the developer who built your site or system. We recommend using this same person. We can work directly with your developer to answer any questions. Occasionally we do custom programming for our clients, but we sometimes don't have the time and resources to do this, and we may charge more than other developers for the same work. We stand behind our guarantee that EZChain is super easy to plug in and use, but for advanced scenarios (very common), some custom programming is often required. Also, if your needs are especially advanced (beyond what EZChain can do) or you don't want to pay EZChain fees, we build purely custom chained payment solutions regularly. Give us details on what you need and we'll give you a quote.

Where can I find a programmer to integrate EZChain into my website or system?

If you don't have a programmer or web developer in house, don't worry. There are thousands of programmers and web developers out there and they're all anxious for work. We recommend searching for freelance programmers on the following sites:
eLance.com
Guru.com
Donanza.com
Freelancer.com
Odesk.com
ScriptLance.com
PeoplePerHour.com (U.K.)

Find a programmer with good reviews who specializes in your type of system. If you have a WordPress system, find a programmer who specializes in WordPress. If you use Joomla, find a Joomla expert, and so on. Post a work request. Get different quotes. Find someone that seems reputable. We will work with whoever you choose so that the integration experience is smooth, fast, and painless. We provide this service for free, but in most cases we cannot do the actual programming for you.

The EZChain site claims "no programming required". Is that really true?

For very simplistic integrations, yes, it's true. For example, if the price of your product or service doesn't change, and if the payment recipients will not change, you simply create an EZChain button through our site, paste the button code into your web page, and you're done. However, it's very common for merchants to need more flexibility and dynamic settings. Also, merchants frequently need EZChain tied into back-end databases and tracking systems. For these advanced scenarios, custom programming is required.

Does EZChain work with PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN)?

Yes. If you want to use IPN notifications you will need to log in to your EZChain account, click Profile, and enter the URL to your publicly-accessible IPN listener. It is not required to use an IPN listener with EZChain, but many merchants like to use it, because it provides near-realtime transaction data that often cannot be obtained in any other way. This transaction data is often grabbed and stored in the merchant's database. Or the info can simply be auto-emailed to you. Anything can be done with this data, it just depends on your needs and objectives. We can build custom IPN listeners for a fee, or your developer can build this for you. Here is a sample IPN listener with instructions, to get you started.

Do customers need a PayPal account to make purchases through EZChain systems?

No, a PayPal account is not required for customers if it's a simple purchase. PayPal certainly tries to steer customers toward creating a PayPal account and then paying through their account. But on the initial PayPal pre-purchase page, the customer can opt to enter credit card info instead of logging in to PayPal. BUT if you're using preapprovals (EZChain Subscriptions), the customer MUST pay by logging into their PayPal account. This is a PayPal limitation and requirement.

Does EZChain store credit card numbers?

No. Credit card info and PayPal login credentials can only be given at the PayPal website. This information never passes through EZChain systems.

Can I build my own Chained Payment system and skip EZChain?

Sure, if you enjoy pain and suffering. Building a custom PayPal Chained Payment system requires advanced custom programming and specialized skills. The APIs are often difficult to work with, hard to troubleshoot, and tricky to implement. And PayPal support is not always as helpful as you might hope. Even if you choose to walk that thorny path, you will end up with a rigid system that can only be changed with more custom programming. EZChain solves all these problems while providing the advanced functionality you need. And if you ever want to change things such as prices, recipients, or payment splits, it's really easy to do without any custom programming. EZChain is easy and powerful, and we have great support!

How do I find my PayPal API credentials?

Log in to your PayPal business account
Click Profile
Click My selling tools
Next to API Access click the Update link
Click the link in the Option 2 gray box
You should now see your API credentials.
Now you can enter the following API credentials into your EZChain Profile:
- API Username
- API Password
- Signature
(AppID won't be available until PayPal approves your app/integration)

Will PayPal or EZChain charge a separate transaction fee for each recipient in the chain?

No. PayPal charges a single fee per transaction, not per recipient. Though the chained payments API does allow fees to be split up in different ways. Currently, EZChain is configured to always deduct the PayPal transaction fee from the primary recipient. The EZChain fee is also per transaction and not per recipient.

Does EZChain take its fees out as part of the chain?

Yes. PayPal's Chained Payments technically allows up to 6 recipients, but EZChain only allows up to 5 recipients. The reason is because EZChain is always one of the recipients, so we use up 1 of the PayPal recipient slots.

Does EZChain send funds to multiple PayPal accounts? Or can it go directly to bank accounts?

EZChain (via PayPal chained payment APIs) sends funds to multiple PayPal accounts, as configured by you. Funds do not go straight to bank accounts. It is easy and free for any PayPal account owner to transfer their PayPal balance to their linked bank account at any time.

Does EZChain do subscriptions (recurring billing)?

Yes. EZChain allows you to quickly and easily create a link or button for your customers to subscribe to your services. EZChain subscriptions come with all the same functionality and flexibility to be able to split payments across up to 5 recipients.

How do EZChain subscriptions (recurring billing) work?

EZChain taps into PayPal Adaptive Payments preapproval APIs in order to work half the magic of subscriptions. The other half comes from EZChain's advanced subscription charging system which captures funds for each subscription at just the right time (as configured by you) and splits the payments to up to 5 recipients. This functionality will save you from all the time, expense, and headaches of having to build your own custom system for calling PayPal's Adaptive Payments and preapproval APIs and then auto-charging subscriptions on an interval, at all the correct times. We handle all this complexity and advanced functionality so you can focus on easily selling online.

How do refunds work with EZChain?

Refunds are tricky with chained payments. Any receiver of funds can refund those funds, but you cannot auto-refund someone else's funds without advanced permissions and API calls. Consider this scenario: A Primary recipient receives $10 and auto-pays a Secondary recipient $2 as part of the chained payment. Then the Primary issues a refund back to the buyer. The entire $10 can be refunded, but the Primary is now at a negative $2 on the transaction, because he cannot "grab back" the $2 he auto-paid to the Secondary. The Secondary is free to grant the $2 refund, but that cannot happen automatically UNLESS advanced permissions are granted from paypal and a custom API call is made to handle that refund.

Why am I getting the error User is not allowed to perform this action?

This error message is caused by one of two problems. Either...

- Your "app" has not yet been approved by PayPal. Your app (or system, integration, etc.) must be approved by the PayPal Adaptive Payments team before your EZChain transactions will work. Please see the FAQ on this topic.

- One or more of your PayPal email recipients are not linked to a VERIFIED PayPal account. Each recipient in a chained payment transaction must be linked to a verified PayPal account, or the transaction will fail. If you're not sure whether a recipient is linked to a verified PayPal account, the best thing to do is contact PayPal.

Who pays the PayPal transaction fees and EZChain transaction fees?

The Primary Recipient pays both the PayPal transaction fees AND the EZChain transaction fees. There is no way to change this. If you have multiple recipients for a transaction, you have complete control over who will be the Primary recipient, and who will be the Secondary recipient(s). The Primary recipient does not have to be the same as the merchant account whose API credentials are being used for the transaction.

Does the Primary recipient have to be the same as the merchant account?

No. Your merchant account (via your PayPal API credentials and AppID) will be the account executing the transaction, but any VERIFIED paypal account can be the Primary or Secondary recipient. You can have only 1 Primary recipient and up to 4 Secondary recipients.

What type of PayPal account do I need to have to use EZChain?

To be a recipient on a split payment transaction (Primary or Secondary) you must have a VERIFIED Business account from PayPal. To make a purchase (the buyer/payer), you can have any type of PayPal account in good standing.

What is the difference between a split payment, a chained payment, and an adaptive payment?

We use the terms 'split payment' and 'chained payment' interchangeably. They are the same. The term 'adaptive payment' is PayPal's term and refers to a suite of APIs related to both chained payments and parallel payments. EZChain does not support parallel payments because they're just not very popular.

What are 'parallel payments' and does EZChain support them?

A parallel payment is a type of split payment in which the customer/payer sees all recipients to the transaction. EZChain does not currently support parallel payments because of lack of interest.

I need a custom chained payment module built--not EZChain. Can you help?

Yes. We have built many custom chained payment modules for many companies. If you need split payment functionality--and EZChain doesn't meet your objectives--you can go purely custom. A custom module has the following advantages over EZChain: (1) No EZChain transaction fees (you still pay PayPal fees); (2) More flexibilty; (3) Works exactly according to your specs; (4) More integration options in some cases. While we stand behind EZChain as a fantastic split payments module that will fit the bill in most cases, sometimes you need to go custom.

I applied for app approval with PayPal and received "Approved Conditionally". Now what?

PayPal's conditional approval doesn't mean much. Until your app (or integration) is fully approved, you won't be able to process live transactions. If you haven't been fully approved within a week, start contacting PayPal and ask what is causing the delay. Unfortunately this is how they choose to operate.

How can I test my EZChain button before going live?

Click the EZChain Buttons tab and create a button. Before saving, select the "Test" radio button in the "Mode" row. Then enter one or more Sandbox email addresses in one or more Sandbox Email fields. To obtain sandbox emails, you must create a test account in the PayPal Sandbox, then create one or more sandbox email accounts. Configure other properties of your EZChain button however you wish. To test, after saving your button, simply click the PayPal button image, or copy/paste the button code into your web page. When your testing is complete, and after PayPal approves your app (you'll be granted an AppID), you can go live. At this point you can edit your button, switch from Test mode to Live mode, configure your real paypal email address(es), and try out your button in Live mode.

What do I put for "Step by Step Payment Flow Instructions" on the PayPal app approval screen?

PayPal needs to know how to come to your site and make a purchase or pay for something. When they do this, chained payments will be invoked. Sample instructions:
1- Log in at www.abc.com (username: john, pwd: xyzzzz)
2- Click the Add To Cart button next to a Widget
3- Click View Cart
4- Click Pay Now
5- Enter your paypal credentials and complete the purchase
Modify the sample instructions above to match your actual payment flow. Note: Many merchants don't have a shopping cart, just a simple Buy Now or Pay Now button for a single product or service. Either way is fine.

What are primary and secondary recipients?

In a PayPal chained payment, the primary recipient is the only recipient of funds that is seen by the customer paying for the item. There can be only one primary recipient. Also, the primary receives all funds before automatically sending payments to one or more secondary recipients. The primary pays both the PayPal fees and the EZChain fees. After a payment transaction completes, this is how the transaction details appear to the primary when logging into PayPal:

And this is how the transaction details appear to the secondary:

An EZChain transaction can have up to 5 secondary recipients. These recipients are invisible to the customer and do not pay PayPal fees or EZChain fees. They do not see the original (total) transaction amount--they only see the cut that comes to them. The same paypal account cannot be both a primary and a secondary. EZChain receives its fees by being one of the secondary recipients on every transaction. Secondaries do not see how much the primary received, nor what other Secondaries receive. They only see what they receive.

A primary can refund the entire transaction amount back to the customer, but that will put the primary in the negative on the transaction, because secondaries have already been paid. A primary refund does NOT automatically grab funds back from secondaries. Any secondary is free to refund funds back to the primary, but they don't have to. There is no way for the primary or the customer to force this refund. A refund from the primary back to the customer cannot automatically grab back funds from secondaries. The primary would need to request that any secondaries issue a refund back to the primary. Secondaries do not see who the customer was, so they cannot refund back to the customer. Only the primary can refund back to the customer. Secondaries can only refund back to the primary because that is where their money came from--not the customer.

How do I get the embedded flow experience with EZChain?

PayPal has recently come out with an "embedded flow" experience that allows the customer to stay on the merchan't website rather than being taken to PayPal's site. Most merchants love the embedded flow; it's just better! Taking advantage of this with EZChain is super easy. Simply go to your button list on the EZChain site, and click the new Embedded Page link underneath the button name. This will launch a separate web page with a PayPal button on it that, when clicked, launches the embedded flow with your EZChain button's settings invoked. You can "view source" on that web page and copy/paste the contents to your own website. Presto! You now have embedded flow for EZChain. Note: Embedded flow is not supported for chained subscriptions--only for standard "buy now" transactions. This is a limitation of PayPal, not EZChain.

How do I make my EZChain button require a shipping address?

You can optionally require a shipping address from the customer during the PayPal checkout process. While this functionality is supported, it is not elegantly implemented. To achieve it, you must use the embedded flow. After launching your embedded flow test page, View Source, and copy/paste the entire contents into a text file. Locate this string in the text file: &Embedded=true. Immediately after that, append this string: &Shipping=true. Your resulting string should look like this: &Embedded=true&Shipping=true. In summary, you're simply appending a name-value pair onto the URL. This must be done exactly right or it won't work. Copy your new button code or URL from the text file, and you'll have embedded flow that requires shipping address. To capture the shipping address, you'll need to harvest the data coming to your IPN listener. For a flat fee, we can do custom IPN and EZChain programming for you.

Does EZChain support Delayed Chained Payments?

Yes. When you create your EZChain button, clicked the "Delayed" radio button and enter other settings as needed. Once a payment is made by a customer through your Delayed button, the funds will be held in the Primary Recipient's account for up to 90 days, until you release the funds to secondary recipients. There are 2 ways to release funds on a delayed chained payment:
(1) Log in to EZChain, click the Tracking tab, and click the Pay button for any item.
(2) Programmatically release funds through our API. See instructions in the Tracking tab.

EasyPlug-In

EZChain plugs into any website or software.

LowFees

No up-front cost and tiny transaction fees.

PayPalTechnology

built on PayPal's popular Adaptive Payments APIs.