Prepopulating PayPal Payment Pages

You can increase sales by pre-populating your customer’s PayPal payment pages.

If you have already collected your customer’s information, you can pass this information to PayPal to prepopulate the first page of a new customer’s sign-up. The fields and parameters are listed below. You can pass all or none of this data. While your customer’s sign-up page will be prepopulated, it will still be editable.

To pass this information to the PayPal payment pages, post the variable name and the associated data to PayPal in the HTML in the form of “variable name = value”. You will also need to change your cmd value to ‘_ext-enter’ and add a new variable, ‘redirect_cmd’, whose value should be ‘_xclick-subscriptions’. Please see the sample code below for an example.

Table 11.1

HTML Variables for Prepopulating Sign-up

Variable Name	Value	Charcter Limitations
first_name	First name	Alphabetic. Maximum length = 32
last_name	Last name	Alphabetic. Maximum length = 64
address1	Street (1 of 2 fields)	Alphanumeric. Maximum length = 100
address2	Street (2 of 2 fields)	Alphanumeric. Maximum length = 100
city	City	Alphabetic. Maximum length = 100
state	State	Must be 2 character official abbreviation
zip	Zip	Numeric. Maximum length = 32 characters
night_phone_a	Home phone (1 of 3 fields)	Numeric. Maximum length = 3 characters
night_phone_b	Home phone (2 of 3 fields)	Numeric. Maximum length = 3 characters
night_phone_c	Home phone (3 of 3 fields)	Numeric. Maximum length = 4 characters
day_phone_a	Work phone (1 of 3 fields)	Numeric. Maximum length = 3 characters
day_phone_b	Work phone (2 of 3 fields)	Numeric. Maximum length = 3 characters
day_phone_c	Work phone (3 of 3 fields)	Numeric. Maximum length = 4 characters

Sample Code

The following sample HTML code shows how the optional pre-population fields would be included in your payment buttons. The field entries would need to be dynamically generated by your website and included in the URL to which your customers are sent when they try to make a PayPal payment.

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="POST">

  <input type="hidden" name="cmd" value="_ext-enter">

  <input type="hidden" name="redirect_cmd" value="_xclick-subscriptions">

  <input type="hidden" name="business" value="alice@mystore.com">

  <input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="Alice’s Writers Digest">

  <input type="hidden" name="item_number" value="12">

  <input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1">

  <input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD">

  <input type="hidden" name="a1" value="0.00">

  <input type="hidden" name="p1" value="1">

  <input type="hidden" name="t1" value="W">

  <input type="hidden" name="a3" value="20.00">

  <input type="hidden" name="p3" value="1">

  <input type="hidden" name="t3" value="Y">

  <input type="hidden" name="src" value="1">

  <input type="hidden" name="sra" value="1">

  <input type="hidden" name="first_name" value="John">

  <input type="hidden" name="last_name" value="Doe"">

  <input type="hidden" name="address1" value="9 Elm Street">

  <input type="hidden" name="address2" value="Apt 5">

  <input type="hidden" name="city" value="Berwyn">

  <input type="hidden" name="state" value="PA">

  <input type="hidden" name="zip" value="19312">

  <input type="hidden" name="night_phone_a" value="610">

  <input type="hidden" name="night_phone_b" value="555">

  <input type="hidden" name="night_phone_c" value="1234">

  <input type="hidden" name="day_phone_a" value="610">

  <input type="hidden" name="day_phone_b" value="555">

  <input type="hidden" name="day_phone_c" value="1222">

  <input type="image"

    SRC="http://images.paypal.com/images/x-click-but01.gif" border="0"

    name="submit"

    alt="Make payments with PayPal - it’s fast, free and secure!">

</form>