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I have a C# MVC (using Umbraco) site that I need to submit a payment through paypal. I have setup a sandbox merchant and buyer account. I am able to submit the payment and everything is working well there. However, my site needs to know when the payment has completed successfully as I will send an email and do some database operations, and here is where I'm having the problem. I cannot get paypal to auto return to my site. I need the return URL to be: 

 http://localhost:56733/payment-confirmation

This is not a duplicate of this question: Setting PayPal return URL and making it auto return?

I am using C#, not PHP. Also, I am trying to run this locally. The solutions listed on the above question DO NOT WORK. The behavior and results are the same.

I do get the screen that shows the following:

You just completed your payment. XXXX, you just completed your payment. Your transaction ID for this payment is: XXXXXXXXXXXXX.

We'll send a confirmation email to XX@XXXX.com. This transaction will appear on your statement as PAYPAL.

Go to PayPal account overview
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Ryan Langton
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  • I'm starting to believe the callback will only be testable on the remote server. This article looks to be helpful. http://blog.liamcavanagh.com/2012/06/how-to-use-paypal-with-asp-net-mvc/ – Ryan Langton Aug 17 '14 at 23:35

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It is not recommended to handle post-payment processing on any return URL. Even with Auto-Return enabled there is no guarantee the user will make it there, and if they don't, that code will never run and you'll end up with tasks not getting completed like you expect.

Even if you're using Express Checkout API's so that you are guaranteed to end up on your own site, it's still not wise to handle all your data updates and email stuff there because the payment could be pending. You wouldn't want to deliver any product or anything like that until the pending payment cleared.

The way to handle all of that correctly is to use Instant Payment Notification (IPN). This will be triggered regardless of whether or not the user makes it back to the return URL, and you'll get multiple IPN's for transactions where the status updates so you can handle those automatically, in real-time as well.

Take a look at the documentation for IPN, but don't let it freak you out just because there's a lot of info there. It's really nothing more than a POST of data to a listener URL that you specify. In that script, you'll receive the data just like you would a form POST. It's really a pretty simple thing to setup, and you can do all sorts of cool things with it.

Drew Angell
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  • So in this case also I won't be able to debug the entire process locally because I need to have a public available URL for IPN to post back to? That's fine if so. I can still just test a Post easy enough with my own data, it just won't be coming from Paypal so I won't know for sure until I run it on the server. – Ryan Langton Aug 18 '14 at 01:34
  • You do need a publicly available address, but you can do that with your local test server no problem. Just use your public IP address or setup a subdomain that points to your public IP address. For example, www.angelleye.com is my live site, but http://paypal.angelleye.com points to my local test server here. – Drew Angell Aug 18 '14 at 02:22