Adobe Commerce 2.3 reached end of support in September 2022.

PayPal Payflow Link payment method

PayPal PayFlow Link is available for merchants in the United States and Canada only. Customers are not required to have a personal PayPal account. Instead, customers enter their credit card information in a form that is hosted by PayPal.

The Payflow gateway uses a secure token to send non-credit card transaction data to the Payflow server for storage in a way that cannot be intercepted and manipulated maliciously. This token secures the data for a one-time transaction and is valid for 30 minutes. When the PWA client runs the placeOrder mutation, Magento requests a secure token. The Payflow server returns the token as a string of up to 32 alphanumeric characters.

The following diagram shows the workflow for placing an order when Payflow Link is the selected payment method.

PayPal Payflow Link sequence diagram

  1. The PWA client uses the setPaymentMethodOnCart mutation to set the payment method.

  2. The mutation returns a Cart object.

  3. The client runs the placeOrder mutation, which creates an order in Magento and begins the authorization process.

  4. Magento requests a secure token from the Paypal gateway.

  5. The gateway response includes a secure token, a secure token ID, and the URL to use for requesting the form in step 9. This token secures the data for a one-time transaction and is valid for 30 minutes.

  6. The placeOrder mutation returns an order ID. Magento does not return secure token information. The order has the status payment pending.

  7. The client runs the getPayflowLinkToken mutation to retrieve the secure token information.

  8. Magento returns the token information.

  9. The client displays a payment form in an iframe rendered from the URL specified by the paypal_url from the getPayflowLinkToken mutation response. When the customer completes the form, the client sends the payment information directly to the PayPal gateway, bypassing the Magento server.

  10. After PayPal processes the payment, the gateway runs a silent post request against the Magento server. As a result, Magento sets the order status to processing, and the order is ready to be invoiced.

  11. The PayPal gateway returns control of the customer’s browser to the client.

Additional Payment information

When you set the payment method to Payflow Link in the setPaymentMethodOnCart mutation, the payment_method object must contain a payflow_link object, which defines the following objects:

Attribute Data Type Description
cancel_url String! The relative URL of the page that PayPal will redirect to when the buyer cancels the transaction in order to choose a different payment method. If the full URL to this page is https://www.example.com/paypal/action/cancel.html, the relative URL is paypal/action/cancel.html
error_url String! The relative URL of the transaction error page that PayPal will redirect to upon payment error. If the full URL to this page is https://www.example.com/paypal/action/error.html, the relative URL is paypal/action/error.html
return_url String! The relative URL of the final confirmation page that PayPal will redirect to upon payment success. If the full URL to this page is https://www.example.com/paypal/action/return.html, the relative URL is paypal/action/return.html

Example usage

The following example shows the setPaymentMethodOnCart mutation constructed for the Payflow Link payment method.

Request:

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mutation {
    setPaymentMethodOnCart(input: {
        payment_method: {
            code: "payflow_link"
            payflow_link: {
                return_url: "paypal/action/return.html"
                error_url: "paypal/action/error.html"
                cancel_url: "paypal/action/cancel.html"
            }
        }
        cart_id: "IeTUiU0oCXjm0uRqGCOuhQ2AuQatogjG"
    }) {
        cart {
            selected_payment_method {
                code
                title
            }
        }
    }
}

Response:

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{
  "data": {
    "setPaymentMethodOnCart": {
      "cart": {
        "selected_payment_method": {
          "code": "payflow_link",
          "title": "PayPal Payflow Link"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}