Save PayPal with the iOS SDK

Allow customers to save their PayPal Wallet in order to eliminate the need to re-enter payment details on subsequent purchases - leading to a faster checkout experience.

Customers with a PayPal Wallet can:

• Review PayPal transactions and transaction history
• Review, add, or remove funding sources
• Review and cancel recurring payments
• Hold a balance in their PayPal account
• Use PayPal to send and receive money
• Withdraw money to a linked bank account
• Use PayPal to transact with merchants

Use cases

Businesses save payment methods if they want customers to:

• Check out without re-entering a payment method
• Pay after use, for example, ride-sharing and food delivery

Availability

See supported countries

Check eligibility

1. Go to paypal.com and sign in with your business account.
2. Go to Account Settings > Payment Preferences > Save PayPal and Venmo payment methods.
3. In the Save PayPal and Venmo payment methods section, select Get Started.
4. When you submit profile details, PayPal reviews your eligibility to save PayPal Wallets.
5. After PayPal reviews your eligibility, you'll see a status of Success, Need more information, or Denied.

How it works

PayPal encrypts payment method information and stores it in a digital vault for that customer.

1. Create an order with a PayPal payment source.
2. Present PayPal Web Checkout to the payer using the PayPal SDK.
3. After the payer completes PayPal Web Checkout, capture or authorize the order.
4. On success, store the PayPal-generated customer ID and Payment Token found in the capture or authorize response in your server-side database for future reference.
5. When a customer returns to your app and is ready to check out, use the PayPal-generated payment token as a payment source when creating an order.

The checkout process for returning payers can now be made shorter by using saved payment information.

Know before you code

• This integration requires a PayPal Developer account.
• This procedure modifies an existing standard payments or advanced credit and debit card payments integration.
• Your payments integration must have a server-side capture call or a server-side authorization and capture call.
• To save payment methods, you must be able to uniquely identify payers. For example, payers create an account and log in to your site.
• Complete the steps in Get started to get the following sandbox account information from the Developer Dashboard:
  • Your sandbox account login information
  • Your access token

1. Set up sandbox to save payment methods

Set up your sandbox and live business accounts to save payment methods:

1. Log in to the Developer Dashboard.
2. Under REST API apps, select your app name.
3. Under Sandbox App Settings > App Feature Options, check Accept payments.
4. Expand Advanced options. Confirm that Vault is selected.

To go live, you'll need to be vetted for PayPal Wallet. You can start the vetting process from the Merchant Servicing Dashboard.

• Only your sandbox business account is enabled for vaulting payment methods. Your developer account remains unaffected.
• You'll complete production onboarding when you're ready to go live.

2. Add a button to initiate a transaction

Add a button to your app's UI to complete a purchase with PayPal:

1PayPalButton.Representable(){
2// Create order server-side (see next step)
3}

3. Create an order

Set up your server to call the Orders API. Set the payment_source to paypal and request vaulting of the payment source when the transaction completes successfully.

Create order request

Modify the following request to create an order and initiate a vault for a PayPal payment source:

1curl -v -X POST https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/ \\
2 -H "Content-Type: application/json"\\
3 -H "Authorization: Bearer ACCESS-TOKEN"\\
4 -H "PayPal-Request-Id: REQUEST-ID"\\
5 -d '{
6    "intent": "CAPTURE",
7    "purchase_units": [{
8      "amount": {
9        "currency_code": "USD",
10        "value": "100.00"
11      }
12    }],
13    "payment_source": {
14      "paypal": {
15        "attributes": {
16          "vault": {
17            "store_in_vault": "ON_SUCCESS",
18            "usage_type": "MERCHANT",
19            "customer_type": "CONSUMER"
20          }
21        },
22      }
23    }
24  }'

Create order response

Return the id to your client to call the payer approval flow if the payment_source needs payer approval.

1{
2"id":"5O190127TN364715T",
3"status":"PAYER_ACTION_REQUIRED",
4"payment_source":{
5"paypal":{}
6},
7"links":[{
8"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/5O190127TN364715T",
9"rel":"self",
10"method":"GET"
11},
12{
13"href":"https://www.paypal.com/checkoutnow?token=5O190127TN364715T",
14"rel":"payer-action",
15"method":"GET"
16}
17]
18}

4. Start PayPal Web Checkout

Locate the id property in the Orders API response JSON. This is the Order ID.

Send orderId to the iOS SDK to allow it to start PayPal Web Checkout:

1func startPayPalVaultDuringPurchase(){
2let order =myCreateOrderFunc(amount:10.00,vaultPaymentMethodOnSuccess:true)
3let config =CoreConfig(clientID:"CLIENT_ID",environment:.live)
4let payPalClient =PayPalWebCheckoutClient(config: config)
5  payPalClient.delegate= self
6let payPalRequest =PayPalWebCheckoutRequest(orderID: order.id,fundingSource:.paypal)
7  payPalWebCheckoutClient.start(request: payPalRequest)
8}
9func payPal(
10_ payPalClient:PayPalWebCheckoutClient,
11  didFinishWithResult result:PayPalWebCheckoutResult
12){
13// After the payer approves, authorize or capture the transaction on your server (see next step)
14}
15func payPal(
16_ payPalClient:PayPalWebCheckoutClient,
17  didFinishWithError error:CoreSDKError
18){
19// Handle error
20}
21func payPalDidCancel(_ payPalClient:PayPalWebCheckoutClient){
22// PayPal Checkout cancelled
23}

5. Authorize or capture order

After the payer approves, do one of the following on your server:

• Capture the order using the Orders API if the intent passed to create the order was CAPTURE
• Authorize the order using the Orders API if the intent passed to create the order was AUTHORIZE

When capture or authorization succeeds, a vault.id is created.

Authorize order request

1curl -v -X POST https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/5O190127TN364715T/authorize \\
2 -H "Content-Type: application/json"\\
3 -H "Authorization: Bearer ACCESS-TOKEN"\\
4 -d '{}'

Capture order request

1curl -v -X POST https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/5O190127TN364715T/capture \\
2 -H "Content-Type: application/json"\\
3 -H "Authorization: Bearer ACCESS-TOKEN"\\
4 -d '{}'

Capture order response

The HTTP response codes HTTP 2xx or HTTP 200 are returned for a successful request.

The capture is successful if the purchase_units[0].payments.captures.status is COMPLETED. You can confirm with the payer that the payment has been captured.

In the response from the authorize or capture request, the Orders v2 API interacts with the Payment Method Tokens v3 API. The Payment Method Tokens v3 API allows a PayPal Wallet to be saved. The response from the Orders v2 API contains the:

• vault.id
• customer.id
• vault.status
• links for the payment token of a recently saved PayPal Wallet.

Capture order

1{
2"id":"5O190127TN364715T",
3"status":"COMPLETED",
4"payment_source":{
5"paypal":{
6"attribute":{
7"vault":{
8"id":"3nqvjt3n",
9"customer":{
10"id":"208743798"
11},
12"status":"VAULTED",
13"links":[{
14"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v3/vault/payment-tokens/3nqvjt3n",
15"rel":"self",
16"method":"GET"
17},
18{
19"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v3/vault/payment-tokens/3nqvjt3n",
20"rel":"delete",
21"method":"DELETE"
22},
23{
24"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/5O190127TN364715T",
25"rel":"up",
26"method":"GET"
27}
28]
29}
30},
31"name":{
32"given_name":"Firstname",
33"surname":"Lastname"
34},
35"email_address":"[email protected]",
36"phone_number":{
37"national_number":"2025212022"
38},
39"account_id":"QYR5Z8XDVJNXQ",
40"address":{
41"country_code":"US"
42},
43}
44},
45"payer":{
46"name":{
47"given_name":"Firstname",
48"surname":"Lastname"
49},
50"email_address":"[email protected]",
51"phone_number":{
52"national_number":"2025212022"
53},
54"payer_id":"QYR5Z8XDVJNXQ",
55"address":{
56"country_code":"US"
57}
58}
59"purchase_units":[{
60"reference_id":"d9f80740-38f0-11e8-b467-0ed5f89f718b",
61"payments":{
62"captures":[{
63"id":"3C679366HH908993F",
64"status":"COMPLETED",
65"amount":{
66"currency_code":"USD",
67"value":"100.00"
68},
69"seller_protection":{
70"status":"ELIGIBLE",
71"dispute_categories":[
72"ITEM_NOT_RECEIVED",
73"UNAUTHORIZED_TRANSACTION"
74]
75},
76"final_capture":true,
77"seller_receivable_breakdown":{
78"gross_amount":{
79"currency_code":"USD",
80"value":"100.00"
81},
82"paypal_fee":{
83"currency_code":"USD",
84"value":"3.00"
85},
86"net_amount":{
87"currency_code":"USD",
88"value":"97.00"
89}
90},
91"create_time":"2022-01-01T21:20:49Z",
92"update_time":"2022-01-01T21:20:49Z",
93"links":[{
94"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/payments/captures/3C679366HH908993F",
95"rel":"self",
96"method":"GET"
97},
98{
99"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/payments/captures/3C679366HH908993F/refund",
100"rel":"refund",
101"method":"POST"
102}
103]
104}]
105}
106}],
107"links":[{
108"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/5O190127TN364715T",
109"rel":"self",
110"method":"GET"
111}]
112}

Save approved payment source

If the payment has been authorized or captured, the payer does not need to be present to save a payment_source. To keep checkout times as short as possible, the Orders API responds as soon as payment is captured.

If the attributes.vault.status returned after payment is APPROVED, you won't have a vault.id yet. An example of the attributes object from this scenario is in the following sample:

1"attributes":{
2"vault":{
3"status":"APPROVED",
4"links":[
5{
6"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v2/checkout/orders/5O190127TN364715T",
7"rel":"up",
8"method":"GET"
9}
10]
11}
12}

The Payment Method Tokens API still saves the payment source even after the Orders API returns its response and sends a webhook after the payment source is saved.

In order to retrieve a vault_id when an APPROVED status is returned, you'll need to subscribe to the VAULT.PAYMENT-TOKEN.CREATED webhook.

The Payment Method Tokens API sends a webhook after the payment source is saved. An example of the VAULT.PAYMENT-TOKEN.CREATED webhook payload is shown in the following sample:

1{
2"id":"WH-72S4353495632143A-68K769747M133873M",
3"event_version":"1.0",
4"create_time":"2022-08-27T01:25:57.462Z",
5"resource_type":"payment_token",
6"resource_version":"3.0",
7"event_type":"VAULT.PAYMENT-TOKEN.CREATED",
8"summary":"A payment token has been created.",
9"resource":{
10"time_created":"2022-08-26T18:25:57.449PDT",
11"links":[
12{
13"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v3/vault/payment-tokens/7vrxmrw",
14"rel":"self",
15"method":"GET",
16"encType":"application/json"
17},
18{
19"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v3/vault/payment-tokens/7vrxmrw",
20"rel":"delete",
21"method":"DELETE",
22"encType":"application/json"
23}
24],
25"id":"3nqvjt3n",
26"payment_source":{
27"paypal":{
28"permit_multiple_payment_tokens":false,
29"usage_type":"MERCHANT",
30"customer_type":"CONSUMER",
31"email_address":"[email protected]",
32"payer_id":"VTR4JYK7STE7J"
33}
34},
35"customer":{
36"id":"208743798"
37}
38},
39"links":[
40{
41"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/notifications/webhooks-events/WH-72S4353495632143A-68K769747M133873M",
42"rel":"self",
43"method":"GET"
44},
45{
46"href":"https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/notifications/webhooks-events/WH-72S4353495632143A-68K769747M133873M/resend",
47"rel":"resend",
48"method":"POST"
49}
50]
51}

In the previous example, the resource.id field is the vault ID. The resource.customer.id is the PayPal-generated customer ID.

6. Test your integration

Run the following tests in the PayPal sandbox to ensure you can save PayPal Wallets.

Save payment method

1. In your app, initiate a transaction by selecting the PayPal button.
2. Log in to the payer account and complete PayPal Web Checkout.
3. Capture the transaction.
4. Store the PayPal-generated customer ID in your system.
5. Log in to sandbox with your merchant account and verify the transaction.
6. Return to your app and initiate another transaction. Use the PayPal-generated payment token as a payment source.
7. Verify that the transaction captures successfully without having to complete PayPal Web Checkout again.

Next steps

• Test and go live with this integration.
• Change the credentials and API URLs from api-m.sandbox.paypal.com to api-m.paypal.com when going live with your integration.
• You can create orders without the payment_source.paypal.attributes.vault for subsequent or recurring transactions.
• You can get a payment token, list all payment tokens, delete a payment token, and more with the Payment Method Tokens API.