Paid Work Offered: PayPal IPN / Shopify woes

  • 11 September 2019
  • 10 replies
  • 6706 views

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Hi fellow @experts

I have a client he sells through Shopify and customers pay with PayPal - but he can't get PayPal to trigger in Zapier due to the IPN being overwritten.

He's been given this solution by PayPal:

Screen Shot 2019-09-11 at 11.46.25.pngThis is out of my expertise, but if anyone else thinks they can help him he's asking people to contact him directly at:

tom+zapiertask@masteringthemix.com




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10 replies

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Hey @Luhhu,

It sounds like this is likely what your client needs to do to get this working: https://zapier.com/apps/paypal/help#setting-it-up. Additionally, there is a section on notification URLs right below that section of the help article that may be useful as well.

If that doesn't help, let us know and perhaps someone else has a solution to offer!


Userlevel 7
Badge +10

@jesse - the problem is, certain apps like Shopify override whatever is put in the IPN settings - so PayPal payments made through Shopify will never get the Zapier's webhook.


Userlevel 5

Hey @Luhhu — I'm just seeing this today and spent a little time looking into it. There's a section in the Zapier help article that @jesse linked out to that says this:

Turn on your Zap. Now, your PayPal transactions will get sent to the URL you specified, but you can still set up as many other PayPal Zaps as you want to send that data to other apps as well.

Note: If the plugin/service overrides Zapier's IPN URL in your PayPal account, you'll need to disable it to allow Zapier's URL to persist as the default IPN URL.

I can't see anything in Shopify's documentation that indicates that it is possible to change the IPN URL. Their support forums seem to indicate that they "don't support" other IPN settings.

What isn't 100% clear to me from what I've found online so far is whether Shopify permits the disabling of the PayPal IPN. If so, then that may allow the PayPal account's default IPN URL to be used moving forward.

Failing all of that, it appears that the PayPal support message is suggesting to your client that a PayPal REST app would need to be developed. PayPal has quite a bit of documentation for their REST API, so perhaps the plan would to create a simple app for PayPal triggered on new payments and then sent a hook to your client's Zapier URL. That seems to be a promising direction to head in.

I hope this helps!


Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Yes @TheDavidJohnson - my understanding is the REST app is the only way forward when dealing with multiple IPNs.

However, it's out of my wheelhouse, hence posting it here in 'Work Offered' in case anyone wants to contact Tom and get paid to solve this for him 😀


Userlevel 5

Thanks, @Luhhu — that occurred to me after I wrote the response above. I reached out to Tom shortly thereafter. Thanks!


Userlevel 7
Badge +9

Thanks for working through this @Luhhu and @TheDavidJohnson! Please be sure to update this thread if y'all are able to get things sorted out for Tom!


Userlevel 5

Will do! Thanks, @jesse!

I have a call scheduled with Tom for later this week. I'll circle back here once we have a plan. Thanks!


Userlevel 7
Badge +12

@TheDavidJohnson if you have a minute I'd love to hear if there's an update on this :)


Userlevel 5

Thanks, @Danvers — the project ended up being postponed for now. I'll circle back and update this if it moves forward at some point, though! 🙂


Userlevel 7
Badge +12

Great, thank you!