PayPal product feed guidelines

To provide your feed directly to the PayPal shopping team, we will walk through the required feed parameters. This document will cover what the PayPal team needs to download a feed on a regular cadence, and the required fields within the feed document.

Product Feed Submission Requirements

To integrate your product catalog, provide access to your product feed using one of the following methods:

1. Public URL

• A publicly accessible URL to your product catalog file, such as https://www.merchantname.com/productCatalog.csv.
• The URL must not require authentication.
• Public URLs must not be password-protected or require login, as our crawlers cannot access protected files.
• The file should be downloadable directly by a crawler.

2. FTP/SFTP Access

• Provide FTP credentials including:
  • URL to feed file, such as ftp://products.domain.com/merchant/merchantFeed.csv.gz.
  • Username
  • Password
• The feed file should be regularly updated and accessible by our system.

3. GCS Access

• Provide our service account READ access to your GCS bucket which hosts the feed file.
• The feed file should be regularly updated and accessible by our system.
• Provide a manifest.csv file in this bucket. For each merchant that you will be uploading into this bucket, we expect one row in the manifest file containing the following information: storeName, storeUrl, country, currency, favIcon, and pathToFileInThisBucket.

Tip: If all options are available, we recommend using a public URL for easier setup and maintenance.

Note: By default, PayPal downloads these feeds once daily. If you require a different cadence, work with your PayPal contact to adjust this.

Supported File Types

We support the following file formats for product feeds:

• CSV: Comma-separated values file (,)
• TSV: Tab-separated values file (\t)
• PSV: Pipe-separated values file (|)
• GZ: Gzip compressed archive containing a single CSV or TSV file.
• ZIP: ZIP compressed archive containing a single CSV or TSV file.

Ensure that your feed file does not exceed 4GB in size. For compressed formats (GZ or ZIP), the archive must contain only one CSV or TSV file within it. The single file inside a compressed archive must follow the same naming rules as uncompressed files, such as merchantFeed.csv.

All feeds must be UTF-8 encoded and include a header row specifying column names.

Feed Format Requirements

For seamless integration, we recommend using the Google Merchant Center product data specification. This format is widely adopted and facilitates compatibility across various platforms.

Alongside Google's schema, PayPal's catalog system also supports:

• Impact Radius's Shopping schema
  • If you are using Impact Radius, expose a parent identifier as the Parent SKU field in the merchant portal.
• Commission Junction Shopping schema

If your catalog does not follow one of these formats, work with your PayPal contact to explore other options. Field mappings for Impact Radius and Commission Junction are provided in Appendix A.

Product Data Schema:

Enable PayPal Shopping Recommendations by passing the following fields:

The more complete and detailed your product feed is, the better we can surface your products in relevant shopping experiences. Providing rich attributes can improve product discovery, search relevance, and personalized recommendations across PayPal surfaces.

Refer to the following resources for additional supported columns:

• Google Shopping Product Specifications
• Impact Product Specifications
• Commission Junction Product Specifications

Validation Rules

• Required fields must not be blank.
• Prices must be numeric and >0.
• Currency must follow ISO 4217, such as USD and CAD.
• GTINs must be valid per GS1 specifications.
• Header row must match expected field names.

Additional Considerations

• Product Variants: Ensure that each variant, such as different sizes or colors, has a unique id and shares the same item_group_id to group related products effectively.
• Rich Attributes: The more detailed your feed, the better your products surface in recommendations.
• Data Accuracy: Regularly update your feed to reflect accurate product information, including pricing and availability. Stale or inaccurate data may result in suppressed products or reduced ranking in PayPal recommendations.

Support

For any adjustments, issues, or additional support needs, work directly with your PayPal contact, who will coordinate with the appropriate teams.

Appendix A: Alternate Schema Notes

Impact Radius: Provide Parent SKU in the merchant portal as item_group_id. Additional field mapping provided on request. Reference.

Commission Junction: Field mappings aligned with CJ Shopping schema. Contact your PayPal representative for specifics. Reference.