Offer a holistic view of payment and sales data in all relevant systems with PayPal integration connector

PayPal hardly requires any extensive introduction. A global digital payment provider with operations in over 200 countries support for 25 different currencies, PayPal was one of the first vendors to enable users to shop online conveniently and securely. It’s no wonder, therefore, that PayPal is one of the most preferred payment intermediaries for online stores out there.

It’s flexibly configurable and provides support for all major shopping carts. In addition to that, PayPal can be integrated via its API and has an extensive documentation, navigating you step by step on how to, e.g. get a history of transactions or manage tracking information using its dedicated API endpoints.

About elastic.io’s PayPal integration connector

This is a custom connector that allows you to talk to the PayPal API endpoints and push or pull data from PayPal to use it in your projects dedicated to automation of business workflows. It was developed specifically for the elastic.io iPaaS and comes by default together with all of the other connectors available on the platform.

The PayPal connector has has both the trigger and the action functionalities. This means that you can use it as a first step in your flow to trigger some action in another system (=PayPal as a trigger) or have it act upon some change in another system (=PayPal as a action).

For example, you can poll PayPal for new and updates Transactions and send this information to, say, your company CRM. Or you can use the action function called “Make a Payment” to create a sale, an authorized payment to be captured later, or an order. We will briefly discuss each trigger and action below; alternatively, you may learn more about them and the PayPal connector in general by clicking the Documentation link above.

You cannot change our PayPal integration connector due to its proprietary license. In case you need more / other connector functions, please contact our pre-sales team at ps[@]elastic.io to discuss the specifics of your integrations.

PLEASE NOTE: To use the PayPal integration connector in your flows, you must first create an account on the elastic.io platform. Here’s where you can sign up for a free 14-day trial of elastic.io.

How to add PayPal integrations on elastic.io

As an trigger:

Step 1
After you registered on the elastic.io platform, go to the sections Dashboard or Flows, click on the button “Add new Flow” and either scroll down or use the search bar to find the PayPal connector if you want to use it as a trigger.

Step 2

The PayPal connector is still in development and currently provides the trigger function “Get New and Updates Objects” that polls for different data objects. Hence, after selection, this is the function that is selected by default and you’ll be directed straight to the authorisation. In order to add your credentials, you’ll need to specify which PayPal environment you’ll be working on (Sandbox or Production) and enter your Client ID and API Secret.

Step 3

Following that, you’ll be able to further configure the PayPal connector as a trigger by selecting which data objects you will be working with (e.g. Disputes or Transactions) and whether you want to have exclusively new items or new and updated.

Step 4

After that, you can request a sample of the records to ensure that you configured PayPal properly, and you’re finished.

As an action:

Using PayPal as an action means that it follows another application in your workflow and acts upon some changes in it. The setup steps are nearly identical, though: select PayPal from the list of connectors, choose a function to work with, and verify your PayPal account on the elastic.io platform using current or new credentials.

When it comes to functions, you can use the ‘Make Raw Request’ function to execute custom requests to the PayPal API endpoints using any of the GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, or DELETE methods. Or you can execute the ‘Lookup Object’ function to look up one specific object by unique field, while the ‘Make a Payment’ function allows you to create a sale, an authorized payment, or an order with the payment details provided from a previous system in your flow.

OUR TIP: To quickly evaluate PayPal’s action connector settings, you can begin your test flow with our Simple Trigger connector. Keep in mind, though, that Simple Trigger is not suitable for testing how the PayPal connector receives datasets from other systems because it lacks any payment-related data items to sync.

For more details on how to work with the PayPal component, please check the dedication Documentation page following the link above.

Popular PayPal automation scenarios

As a digital payment platform, PayPal is as popular as it gets, hence there are many single integration solutions that allow merchants to ensure data exchange between one of their systems – an online shop or CRM – and PayPal. Yet if you’re in need of a more holistic integration solution, where you can connect several systems like ERP, CRM, bookkeeping or or even marketing along with PayPal and your online shop, an integration platform such as the one provided by elastic.io might be just the right choice.

Data stored in PayPal can be used in many different ways, but here are just a few examples of the most popular PayPal integrations that our users have created:

PayPal with Salesforce

To automatically record successful PayPal sales in your CRM and update the customer database on the fly.

PayPal with VTEX

To easily add the most popular payment processing gateway to an online store that was built with VTEX.

PayPal with QuickBooks

To create online invoices and add sales receipts in QuickBooks for all successful sales in PayPal.

… and there are many more apps to connect to.

Take a look at all of the applications and systems you can connect PayPal with to offer the users of your online shop more flexibility when it comes to payment options. Get your free 14-day demo now, no strings attached.