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It appears as though the newish payout (including batch) endpoints more or less match up with the older MassPay functionality. The fee structures seem to match up, with payouts having an advantage for transfers within the US. Even some of the events get logged as MassPay. It appears for all practical purposes that payouts is meant to replace MassPay.

What I haven't been able to find is a definitive statement from PayPal to that effect. I have looked for an announcement from when payouts was introduced, through technical and general support documentation, and generally in every place I could think of.

Obviously, the LACK of such a statement could say something all on its own. It just doesn't seem like it should be the case.

Has anyone seen an official statement that I can refer to? Or, if PayPal folks are listening, is such a statement possible?

Something along the lines of, "PayPal is encouraging developers to build new systems needing MassPay functionality using the Payout endpoints of the REST API"

Thanks!

Chris Green
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2 Answers2

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The Payouts API is a brand new REST-based API that replaces Mass Payments classic APIs. Payouts has more features as compared to Mass Payments.

Businesses which need to send disbursements to up to 500 recipients in a single API call will use the Payouts API.

These new API’s close the product gap between PayPal Payouts capabilities, and our new crop of competitors. And crucially the new Payouts API’s solve numerous product problems inherent in the Mass Payments APIs

What does Payouts API have over Mass Payments API:

  • US and CA domestic pricing - $0.25 USD flat fee for US domestic payouts, and $0.32 CAD for CA domestic payouts
  • Send up to 500 payouts in a single API call
  • Duplicate checking – PayPal can check for duplicate payout requests
  • New Single payout capability – PayPal will return transaction status directly in the Payouts call response -1:1 mapping of an entire batch’s requests – easily retrieve via API call the status of each request in a batch, when ever you want, how frequently you want
  • On-Demand Reporting – Allows you to easily query for payouts by time, status or recipient

What doesn’t Payouts have?

Payouts does not allow for manual file uploading.

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/integration/direct/payouts-overview/

Vimalnath
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  • Do you know if the requirements for enabling the Payouts API are the same as the Mass Pay API? Is there a minimum monthly income that you must have in order to be approved for the Payouts API (non-U.S. account)? – theyuv Jul 13 '16 at 09:25
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They do the same thing; they even share a lot of internal PayPal code. The Payouts APIs essentially just more modern wrappers.

PayPal has yet to ever deprecate and replace APIs (which is a huge problem & source of confusion). So you are entirely welcome to use either set of APIs -- for now and, given the number of people already using the MassPay APIs, probably for a long, long time.

But yes, theoretically the Payouts APIs are the replacement for MassPay just as the other REST Payments APIs are the replacement for Express Checkout.

geewiz
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