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Author: Joel Kristenson

Last Updated: 2021-01-18

Overview

This article walks through the steps to connect your PayPal Payments Pro (business account) with your Trail Blazer database.  This allows you to process money through our integrated donation form, event registration system, and our integrated shopping cart.

It begins by going through the steps on how to generate your PayPal Payments Pro API Username, Password, and Signature, and from there, how to plug that information into the Payment Gateway section of your database.

Important: there are quite a few different versions of PayPal, in order to utilize our integration, you will need to purchase a “Pro – Business Account”.  If you are a nonprofit, they have special pricing that you can apply for.

Tip: If you run into any issues on the PayPal side of things, you can contact PayPal Pro tech support: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/helpcenter/helphub/home/ or 1-888-818-3922.

Activate your PayPal Pro Account and Generate you API Credentials

Important: you’ll need System Admin security clearance to complete this task. If you don’t currently have it, one of your database administrators will either need to provide it, or you will need to work with one of your database admins or a Trail Blazer support tech.

First, apply for your PayPal Payments Pro business account.

Apply Online: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/referral/paypal-payments-pro

Apply by Phone: 1-877-455-1505

Once your account is activated, log in: https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/referral/paypal-payments-pro

Click the Gear icon in the top-right and select the Profile and Settings option.

On the My Profile screen, click on My selling tools and then click the ‘Update’ hyperlink next to the API access section.

You may get a prompt to pass a security check.  If you get this message, follow the instructions verify an sms message or answer a security questions to proceed.

On the next page, scroll down until you get to the NVP/SOAP API integration (Classic) and click the ‘Manage API credentials’ link.

Select the radio button option for Request API Signature and then click [Agree and Submit].

The next screen will display your API Username, API Password, and Signature.  You may need to click a link to display each if they are hidden.  My example is below (some of the information has been redacted for security purposes).

You will need top input these values into your Trail Blazer database.  The next sections shows how.

Add your PayPal Pro API Credentials to the Payment Gateway Section in your Trail Blazer Database

Log into Trail Blazer and navigate to the Payment Gateway screen by following Application Menu > System Manger > Settings > Payment Gateway.

Select PayPal Payments Pro as the merchant gateway option and input your API Username, API Password, and Signature into the corresponding fields in the upper-right.  You’ll also want to select which credit card types you want to offer. Enter a note about when and who input the information (not required but this can be useful to look back on).  My finished example is below.

Click [Save and Close] once complete.

Next, you will need to refresh your website settings inside of the database for the updates to take effect.  Navigate to System Manager > Settings > Website Configuration.

Click the blue link near the top-middle of the screen to ‘refresh your website pages using updated specifications’.

Test your donation form to make sure everything is configured properly.  You can do this by navigating to where the form is hosted on our secure domain: https://www.trailblz.info/YourDatabaseName/donate

If the donation is processed, you will be redirected to a thank-you page and the data will populate in the Contributions List.  Example:

Note: If your test transaction fails, you can navigate to the Logs section of the database and search by the date you are running your test(s).  These logs will provide some details on why the transaction failed, and an error code that you can look up on the PayPal Error Code Page: https://www.trailblz.com/kb/?action=view&kb=242&cat=0&qq=paypal