Integrations

Building your own online payment app is costly and time-consuming. Hiring a development team or outsourcing to freelancers could allow you to focus on your business goals, but could also result in a strain on financial resources. PayPal has a way to integrate their payment solution onto your site, which saves a significant amount of time and money. Not only is it an easy way to collect payments, but it is a highly collaborative system that can work with other third-party apps to deliver value to you and your customers.  

What is the PayPal REST API?

REST (Representational State Transfer) uses less bandwidth overall on the internet because the API only appears when the user has need of it, so the PayPal option will only be present when the user is ready to make a payment and not a moment before. This ultimately results in a high-performance app that will enrich your customer's experience. And who doesn't want an easy and smooth checkout process that's guaranteed to be fast and secure?! When it comes to nurturing brand loyalty and attracting new customers, good user experience is a huge factor.

From a developer's point of view, it is easy to build and set up an app for a business looking to integrate a payment option like PayPal. There are other benefits to using PayPal, as they now accept certain cryptocurrencies as payment, and they offer their own shipping service for free as well as discounts on select shipping companies. 

PayPal offers a variety of payment plans 

The way your customers pay can be changed to whatever business model suits you best, but payment is instant. They may make once off payments or even a yearly/monthly subscription if you are providing an ongoing service. If, for example, you have four payment plans, whichever plan your customer signs up to will have that amount of money taken from their account on the agreed renewal date.

Competitors to PayPal are quite inflexible in this area, so it can set you apart from your own competition if you are incorporating PayPal in your own customers’ journey. Despite this, PayPal does not force their customers into long-term contracts, so if a customer wants to make a switch they do not have any obligations to fulfil before they can make the move.  

Integration with other business systems

PayPal is not just a standalone integration, it can interact with the other third-party apps that you use in your business. It can connect with a whole range of shopping carts (Shopify and BigCommerce, for example) and any accountancy software you use (Intuit QuickBooks and Invoice2go, for example) can be synced with PayPal, so you can keep track of your intake more efficiently. 

Combined with your own brand name, using these well-known brands will add a layer of trust. PayPal is a recognised brand, around the world, so shoppers will feel safe using it. PayPal also has a partner program, where they can put you in touch with the right services to help grow your business (Wix.com and Squarespace are two).

How to set up your PayPal 

Set up on PayPal is minimal, you can use your personal PayPal account or a business account. You can start to create applications once you have your PayPal API credentials. Once you provide PayPal with some basic information about yourself/your company, you can begin development. You do not need a merchant account with your bank because the PayPal API operates as an account would and the payment comes through your app to the bank account of your choice. 

PayPal offers a high-level of security, so your data is well protected. That also extends to your own customers' data. They will feel at ease knowing that they are offered the same level of protection as a multi-billion dollar corporation. Data is encrypted and then stored on another server that has its own security measures put in place so that anyone who should not be looking at your data is kept well away. 

Entrepreneurs are protected by PayPal on a legal basis too. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard that means you will not have to pay any penalties or worry about unethical practices, PayPal’s legal team have already checked and double-checked how their integrations are built and used. 

The PayPal Sandbox 

PayPal makes it straightforward to get going; there is no wait time, they simply provide you with your live API credentials (Client ID and a generated password) and you are cleared to take payment through PayPal on your website. 

If you need to test your ecommerce checkout, PayPal will provide you with dummy credentials that are not connected to any real details so that you can test your solution before launch. 

They have a high level of testability, and PayPal have included Sandbox APIs for an extra level of safety. There does not have to be any association with a third-party API during testing. Apps can also be rapidly tested by a group of beta testers external to your organisation or by your internal teams, which reduces time spent on fixing bugs and gives you a speedier launch schedule. Errors can be simulated to gauge response times, latency, or even general non-responsiveness.  

Having a PayPal sandbox environment results in an all-round better finished product the first time, instead of hearing from frustrated customers that a certain feature does not work or is missing. If customers experience difficulty when they use an app or service, there is a good chance that they will not return a second time. 

PayPal apps are perfect for use on mobile 

Smartphones are now the most widely owned internet-enabled device. People are spending significant amounts of time on their phones, it is the perfect place to advertise your business and have an online store in place to collect payment. Naturally, due to the extra time spent online, it is where many businesses report most of their sales. Even large companies like Argos and Tesco have reported that they receive more traffic from mobile than desktops or laptops.

PayPal APIs are scalable to any sized organisation, from a sole trader to a small business to a large enterprise, PayPal has the resources to sustain the largest organisations and is used by corporations all around the world. 

PayPal also has the PayPal Business app, which allows you to keep track of all the business activity on your account involving PayPal. 

PayPal Merchant technical support

PayPal provides a well-organised system of support, divided into four main sections, which keeps customers updated on sections that are down for maintenance and sections that are operational and ready for use on PayPal Status. If you have more questions, you can talk to their customer support team, Developer Portal, or Partner Portal. 

They also have an “Ask the Community” section where fellow developers can offer their input on how to fix your problem as they may have experienced it themselves in the past. Customers use to complain that PayPal did not provide good customer support when things go wrong, but it is clear that they have been listening and have improved their support network for their customers. 

Why you should choose Powform over PayPal

PayPal offers a place for developers to integrate their payment solution as an app or a feature on their websites and online stores. It is a low-code solution and although it is a brilliant resource for developers, it can be tough for non-technical entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Powform, however, offers an easy, no-code solution to this problem. No-code platforms like Powform can be used by non-technical people and citizen developers (developers with no formal training or experience with coding) to build highly effective and presentable apps with company branding built-in. Platforms like Powform also offer highly flexible components which can improve more than just your payment solutions - they can be configured to help with staff training, market research, and much more. 

Powform offers all the benefits of PayPal - the smart buttons, the security, the adaptability - but makes it even easier to develop your form-based web app. It is a drag-and-drop interface that can be used to build simple or complex apps for use across email, social media, and your website. We also offer the same high level of testability as PayPal - use our in-app messenger to select a handful of employees or contacts to troubleshoot your app before launch. You can have your branded Powform web app ready in hours. Get all the benefits of a PayPal with a lot less effort!

PayPal integration is available on our Premium or Enterprise plans. See what other features our plans offer here or jump in a start building a form with our drag and drop builder (no account required unless you want to save your work!).