PayPal

What is it?

PayPal is an international payment provider that supports payment either by credit/debit card or direct bank transfer.

How do we use it?

We use PayPal in two different ways on the support checkouts.

For recurring payments, whether for a recurring contribution or a subscription product, we use the PayPal JS SDK to create a branded PayPal button React component, which when clicked will open a pop up window to PayPal enabling the user to log in and authorise a payment. When the user completes their payment in this window we receive a billing agreement ID (baid) from the PayPal SDK which, similar to a Stripe payment method token, we can later use to retrieve the money.

For one-off contributions, we instead render a standard Source button which when clicked will redirect the user off the support site to a PayPal domain. When the user completes the payment, they will then be directed back to the support site and we'll render the thank-you page.