Express check for regular payments does not work for German payers

Question

I am currently developing a PayPal payment transaction using ExpressCheckout and RecurringPayments. When testing the software, I receive the following message after the (German) buyer has registered with paypal to confirm the payment:

"Zurzeit können wir Ihre Anfrage leider nicht verarbeiten. Kehren Sie zu training counter Test shop zurück und wählen sie eine andere Option aus."

which means

"We cannot complete the request. Return to the store and select another option."

A bit of a hangout for me this paypal support answer:

Dear xxx,

Thanks for contacting PayPal Merchant Technical Services.

As far as I want to give you a positive answer, but unfortunately the Express Express Recurring payment API is not currently supported for German buyers. These German buyers will always get the error that you saw because the sources of financing from Germany are not supported for the recurring payment API, and therefore this error occurs. I'm sorry, but German customers will not be able to use this Service. The only way around this is to change your integration and re-payments for Germany with pre-approved payments or a reference transaction API:

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_ECReferenceTxns

https://www.x.com/devzone/articles/recurring-payments-reference-transactions-and-preapproved-payments

This expression is from two years. So I ask the question: is this a fact? I can't believe this because I would suggest that PayPal would mention this important information in the API link, so programmers could deal with this problem before implementing this method.

Is there a way to solve the problem without programming a new transaction method?

thanks

Answer 1

As well as updating the situation:

We tried to introduce recurring payments through PayPal for German customers (the business itself was also based in Germany) and faced the same problems as the OP described above. PayPal support informed us (by phone) that the RP is still not available in Germany, without a date when this could change.

The reason some (USA) companies, such as Twitch, actually support subscribing to German user channels (even without credit cards), because they have a transaction volume of more than $ 5,000 per month. For your PP account to be enabled for RP with German customers, you must apply for PayPal and be a fairly large company.

The reason is that PayPal basically gives the company access to customer accounts, so theoretically they can deduct money at their discretion (if you look closely at the RP express check API, you will see that the amount with which you actually create a recurring payment profile is not the one that the user agrees when entering PayPal).

So in conclusion: as of December 2014, recurring payments are not supported for German buyers, and there is no publicly available ETA if this could change.