Is IPN essential for Woocommerce PayPal Standard transactions

  • alarch

    (@alarch)


    8 years ago

    Is it essential to have IPN switched on in PayPal for WooCommerce to work adequately? I can see it is very desirable – but I’m not clear whether or not it is necessary.

    This issue arises for sole trader clients who are keen to keep costs down, and therefore do not wish to have the additional costs of SSL certificates – at least not from the start. I understand PayPal will be requiring all websites that integrate with them to utilise SSL for IPN transactions from 30 September 2016. So if IPN transactions aren’t needed, then I assume the need for SSL certificates (for now) is obviated, albeit desirable.

    With businesses that sell high value items that have low order volumes is having the IPN option that big a deal? The seller will receive e-mail notification – and they just need to log in to their PayPal account to confirm that the payment has completed. They can then complete the order and ship the goods. This might not be ideal – but perfectly workable.

    I may well be missing something with my understanding of things here – but having searched high and low I can’t find anything that actually explains clearly the role of IPN, and whether or not it is essential for WooCommerce’s functionality with regard to PayPal transactions.

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Thread Starter alarch

    (@alarch)

    8 years ago

    By the way if you try entering a http:// notification URL in the PayPal settings you get the error message:

    “We’re sorry. That URL won’t work. Please enter an “https” URL.”

    So it would appear that it is already essential for Woocommerce websites using PayPal Standard to use SSL certificates if they wish to utiliise the IPN functionality.

    Plugin Author Mike Jolley (a11n)

    (@mikejolley)

    8 years ago

    We’re in contact with PayPal to see if this is an oversight or permanent. Some users have said entering the https version of the URL still works (and WooCommerce should pass the correct URL to IPN for it to use so it shouldn’t matter).

    IPN is preferred, but you can also use PDT as a backup. See https://docs.woothemes.com/document/paypal-standard/

    Thread Starter alarch

    (@alarch)

    8 years ago

    I’m in advanced testing – and I’ve made a few “live” transactions without any problems. I’m getting e-mail notifications from PayPal that the transaction has completed – so IPN wouldn’t add much to what I’m getting anyway. I’m not sure if these e-mail notifications are being sent because I have set the PDT settings or whether this would have happened anyway. In any event, on the face of it IPN (and by extension SSL) is desirable but not necessary.

    Given that Let’s Encrypt is offering the possibility of free SSL certificates in the not too distant future, perhaps leaving out IPN is a valid option for now for clients looking to minimise costs. I’d be interested to hear what the experiences of others are, and whether there are any pitfalls that I haven’t envisaged with such an approach.

    Plugin Author Mike Jolley (a11n)

    (@mikejolley)

    8 years ago

    As I said this is being checked; as far as I know, PP still does not require HTTPS for IPN to work. We’ll update the docs if this changes/is wrong.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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