Running multiple sites from one Paypal account

[Whiteboards]

Hello all,

I'm guessing my question might be a common one, but I've done a fair bit of searching with no success for an answer so far. I'm hoping someone can help.

I'm currently running Website Payments Standard on one ecommerce site. My site uses the EKMPowershop system, so it's on a hosted shopping cart thing.

It's all set up fine at the moment and doing quite well. However, I want to set up a second website, but run that one from the same Paypal account and it's proving a bit tricky. I've spoken to EKM and they say it's not a problem, but I need to tell Google to allow 'multiple return URLs' or something...?

From what I understand, if I just add a second and set up as before, a customer on website 'a' could place and order, but be redirected to website 'b' after they've paid. This obviously isn't ideal. So, if anyone knows how I can basically add a second site to my Paypal account with a minimum of fuss, that'd be great.

I did actually wonder whether I could just set up a third, basic 'umbrella' site - i.e. whether a customer buys on site 'a' or 'b', they will always end up on site 'c', which will basically be a generic 'thank-you' page, with links on to both sites if they want to go back to the site they were on.

Does that make sense....?!

I'm sure someone else must have had a similar problem....maybe I'm missing something obvious...?

Any help massively appreciated.

Cheers,

Bill

[tri-lab]

I'm having the exact same issues at the moment and I'm with you on there not being any obvious solutions out there (or my goggle-fu is weak)

I've got one core website offering services that that paypal payments and I'm just about to launch a secondary totally separate site, also using paypal. There is no relation between the sites.

At first I thought I could do this using the multiple email's function, but it turns out I am wrong as all the main paypal accounts details are displayed at the end screen (not giving a very good user experience and breaking brand continuity - essential when creating ecommerce sites).

I then begrudgingly created a secondary account with paypal, specifically for the new site.  However when I went to enter my back details, the paypal system got the hump because the bank account was already registered with another user (duh!).

All I really require is an umbrella Paypal account, surely that makes the perfect solution.  What I have to do now is move money from one paypal account, to another, then into my bank.  Can anyone say "money laundering"?

So how do we get around this paypal?

EDIT: I just found this thread. The tl;dr is basically you have to open two accounts. Boooooooooo!

[PayPal_barry]

Hey there guys, In the PayPal account there can only be one return URL set. This is a global setting meaning it will be used when no other value is submitted. Most shopping carts submit their own return URL with the checkout. This value will be used rather than the one set up in the account. It is therefore no problem to run more than one shop through a PayPal account. Hope that helps.

[smartware2u]

We had the exact same problem we have a company that has two brands both wholly owned by the main company.  We had WebPro, and were told that we had to open to separate PayPal accounts - bonkers.  Just to add insult to injury after operating without any problems I arrived at work today at 8am to find an email saying our WebPro had been removed, and we can now only use Express Checkout.  Basically my company can no longer take payments, so will be seeing PayPal in court to sue for consequential losses - once I can find out how this company is structured and who to contact.

[PayPal_barry]

Hey there, sorry to hear about the issues you are having with PayPal and your Web Pro., there are situations where we will allow a business account holder use the Pro. Service for a limited period before there is a review. Should there be any issues in the review it may result in the service being suspended or removed. Please do review then communication you have had from PayPal on this issue and contact hem directly requesting an update or explanation for the situation you have now found yourself in.  Good luck.

[Qaiser]

Hi Barry, If i want to run PayPal website standard account on 2 websites will it work or i need to have 2 PayPal & bank accounts

[merchantdroid]

So if I have two ecommerce sites owned by my company (the company that has one PayPal account), I can have both sites accept payments and have the money go to our company PayPal account?  As long as we leave the return url box in PayPal blank?  Will the customer be redirected back to the respective website they made the purchase from?

Both carts are Zen-Carts.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[nimsadvertising]

I am having the same issue ... I want to accept payments on multiple websites that are owned by 1 single company with 1 bank account .... how can I do that if I need IPN values to be set for each website.

[Tom82S]

Ran into this problem and have been trying to solve it for the last day. 

Solution:

Need a paypal business account. 

If you can specify the paypal page style in the backoffice of 1 or both sites simply point them to different page styles. 

Then establish 2 new page styles within your paypal account (under Profile) and make sure to upload separate header images for each page style. 

Voila problem solved. 2 completely different paypal experiences on 1 paypal account. 

Note: if you can only specify the page style in 1 website backoffice this will take precedence over the default page style set in your paypal account. (simply set the default page style in paypal for the website where you cannot specify the page style to use.)

Hope this can help someone. 

[andy_bapiste]

As I understand this you can run as many as you like from one account as the "return" and "notify_url" values can be overridden on a per transaction basis. You set them as values of fields in the PayPal form for example (if you have used that method and have access to it)

One issue that I have had though, at least in the Sandbox environment, is with order numbers ( the value of the invoice field in the PayPal form ). If one site gives out an order/invoice number and then one of your other sites later gives out the same value the customer gets told that that invoice has been paid already. Obviously to get round this you could seed your order numbers with a site prefix, eg bikes00200 and camping00200.

Hope that helps someone.