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Once VirtueMart is embedded in a Joomla website, the website has an excellent shopping cart which can be used by its visitors to purchase products or services from the website. VirtueMart connects to a number of different payment gateways that will:
PayPal is a very prominent payment gateway that is used by a ton of merchants and VirtueMart connects to PayPal seamlessly.
PayPal also does a multitude of other things like keeping a track of all the sales made, permitting a merchant to withdraw money from the account, keeps a month wise track of all deposits and withdrawals, permits a merchant to make payouts to other merchants, from the money held in the PayPal account and so on
To be able to enjoy all these privileges you have to create a ‘Merchant Account’ in PayPal. PayPal permits all its Merchant accounts to accept money inwards and outwards.
During the 'Testing Phase' of the VirtueMart shopping cart, PayPal encourages you to use its 'Sandbox' account.
This is a special type of PayPal account that will emulate everything that the Merchant Account does but will not actually create a charge on the Credit card used for testing purposes and will not move money into any specific account. The actual financial transactions are NULL transactions, but everything else is exactly as though a purchase transaction happened.
Using the PayPal sandbox, one can check and ensure that the Joomla website/VirtueMart and PayPal are exchanging all the correct/necessary blocks of data, and that PayPal is returning to the Joomla website/VirtueMart all the correct/necessary blocks of data that the VirtueMart shopping cart requires so that it can deliver all the necessary purchase transaction statistics to you from within the VirtueMart application itself.
Once all sorts of testing is complete, and you are satisfied that the Joomla website/VirtueMart and PayPal are interacting satisfactorily, it’s time to move out of the PayPal sandbox and create the live Merchant account at PayPal that you will use as the actual payment gateway for the Joomla website/VirtueMart shopping cart.
The information contained in this tutorial teaches you, step by step, how to create and use a PayPal Merchant account.
Before connecting VirtueMart to the PayPal merchant account, make sure you have a merchant account in PayPal. i.e. PayPal must recognize who you are. If you do not have a PayPal merchant account, here´s how you can create such an account in PayPal. Open a Browser and in its address bar type in: http://www.paypal.com in order to connect to the PayPal website.
The homepage of PayPal loads as shown in Diagram 1. PayPal is capable of sensing that the site visitor is coming in from India, hence India centric information is being displayed.
Diagram 1
Click on the Sign Up button in order to create a new account in PayPal as shown in Diagram 2.
Diagram 2
Select your country or region from the drop down list as shown in Diagram 3.
Diagram 3
After selecting the country or region as shown in Diagram 4, click on the type of account you want to create.
PayPal offers you different membership accounts. You can signup for any of these for free of cost. Based on the account type you will be able to access specific payment gateway features. There are a total of three account types Personal, Premier & Business.
Diagram 4
The explanation to each of the account types is described below:
PayPal Personal Account: This is the basic PayPal account that lets you pay for your eBay purchases with ease. You can use it to send and receive money. You can send funds to anyone with an email address in 55 countries and regions. Personal account will even let you accept payments should you sell something via eBay. The catch: you can only accept payments from other PayPal accounts. You cannot accept credit or debit card payments.
There is no fee for either the Personal account or the transactions you make through it. There is, however, a limit on how much can you receive per month. If you plan to sell a high volume of product, the Personal account might be too restrictive.
PayPal Premier Account: This type of a PayPal account has all the functionality of the Personal account, plus you can accept credit and debit cards, and bank account payments. Premier account also offers such features as “shopping cart” and payment reporting tools. This account type is good for a serious amateur seller who wants to move items online on a regular basis.
Premier accounts are free to create, free to hold money, and free to send money. Withdrawals of funds are where PayPal will take service charges. There are also optional services with optional fees; please check PayPal website for details. The setup process of a Premier account is similar to that of a Personal account. If you currently use a Personal account, you can always upgrade to Premier.
PayPal Business Account: This is the business class of a PayPal account, best suited to individuals running a large scale online business or online store. Business account allows you to operate under your business name, and use Reporting and eBay Tools with no restrictions on transaction size. It is the best choice if you expect complex Accounts Payable. There is broad functionality for the business owners that help them to manage very large amounts of sales with ease.
Like the Premier account, there are optional services with optional fees, but the base Premier account is free for creating, holding, and sending money. Please check the PayPal website for details. The setup process of a Business account is similar to that of a Premier account. If you currently use either Personal or Premier Account, you can upgrade to Business.
In this case, click on “Get Started” button of Personal PayPal Account as shown in Diagram 5.
Diagram 5
Fill in all the required details in the Form.
NOTE: It is not necessary to provide your credit card details while creating your account.
After filling the form with all the information asked for, click on “Agree and Create Account” button as shown in Diagram 6.
Diagram 6
Once the form is submitted, an email is sent by PayPal for the confirmation of your e-mail address.
Go to your e-mail and click on the link “Link your card” and confirm your e-mail address as shown in Diagram 7.
Diagram 7
As soon as you click on the link you will be redirected to the PayPal website where it asks you to choose a security question and bind this to an appropriate answer.
Enter the details. Then Click Submit as shown in Diagram 8.
Diagram 8
PayPal will ask you to key in your credit card or debit card details. This is to make payment without giving your credit card or debit card details every time you shop online. Enter your credit card details and click on Continue button as shown in Diagram 9.
Diagram 9
Now you have completed creating your account. You can login to your account by simply clicking on the link “Go to MyAccount” as shown in Diagram 10.
Diagram 10
As you click on “Go to My Account” link, you will be asked to confirm your Debit Card Number or Credit Card Number to raise your accounts limits.
Click on Continue as shown in Diagram 11.
Diagram 11
As you click on continue, PayPal informs to confirm your card in 2-3 days. PayPal also charges your card with $1.95 USD or equivalent at this time.
NOTE: This amount ($1.95 USD) will be refunded by PayPal once your card is verified.
This charge of $1.95 USD or equivalent creates a unique 4digit code that will show up on your Credit Card statement within a day or two, tops. Login to your Credit card issuing authority’s website, access your account as normal and retrieve the 4digit code associated with the $1.95 USD charged to your credit card by PayPal.
Click on link “Go to my Account Overview” as shown in Diagram 12.
Diagram 12
On the right hand side, under Notifications section, click on link “Confirm my debit or credit card” as shown in Diagram 13.
Diagram 13
As soon as you click on link a small window appears which takes you one step ahead for confirmation of your card.
Click on Confirm Card button as shown in Diagram 14.
Diagram 14
As soon as you click on “Confirm Card” button, a window opens into which you can enter the four digit code retrieved from your Credit card issuer’s website. Enter the 4digit code in the “Enter PayPal Code” text box as shown in Diagram 15.
Once you have entered the four digit code, click on “Confirm Card” button to get your card been confirmed in PayPal as shown in Diagram 15.
Diagram 15
As you click on Confirm Card button, a small window appears displaying that you have raised your account limits and became a verified member of PayPal. It also states that all the charges will be refunded to your PayPal account within 24 hours.
Click on Close button as shown in Diagram 16.
Diagram 16
You will be redirected to your account as shown in Diagram 17.
Diagram 17
Your PayPal account is now active and can be used for further transactions as necessary.
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