Why would Paypal charge for a module that is available free to others?

[Vee.K727]

So I and my store is based in India and I wish to sell in USA along with India. I have a payment gateway to receive payments from Indian customers and for US I wanted Paypal. I looked around in the default modules that came with Prestashop for the Paypal module but didn't find any. I read somewhere that it comes with the package, in the docs maybe.

 

A'right. That's not a big deal, I went to the Marketplace and there were quite a few, some free others were paid. The free ones seemed to be official modules from paypal itself and I saw two options for that: 

 

Paypal USA: https://addons.prestashop.com/en/payment-card-wallet/8277-.html

Paypal Europe: https://addons.prestashop.com/en/payment-card-wallet/1748-paypal.html

 

Paypal Europe covers Asia as well. First of all it is not clear which one you need to install: the country you are in; or the country you are selling to? I tried Paypal Europe first.

 

I installed the plugin and at the configuration screeen I got an error similar to: "Your country is not supported by this plugin". Wierd. Okay, let me try Paypal USA. I install it via the zip file, Prestashop says "module installed successfully" but the module is nowhere to be found. I've tried installing several times, the folder is created in the modules directory but it does not appear in the Modules page.

 

Next I contacted Paypal support of my country who told me they can not help with technical stuff  and I should head over to https://www.paypal-techsupport.com to create a ticket. So I did. After several messages back and forth, here's what I got from Paypal: See screenshot 1 (65.jpg)

 

Here are the links they provided:

https://addons.prestashop.com/en/payment-card-wallet/22786-paypal-standard.html

https://addons.prestashop.com/en/express-checkout-process/23427-paypal-instant-checkout.html

 

After I asked them why these are not free, I got this reply: See screenshot 2 (66.jpg)

 

First of all, Mr. Steven is very poor in English, sorry to say and other thing to note is he is clearly not familiar with the products in question yet did not transfer the query to a more capable team. Most unprofessional, isn't it? It gets worse.

 

They didn't reply since! How about that?

 

So is this the service prestashop customers can expect from Paypal? Are there any alternatives?

Edited March 7, 2017 by Vee.K727 (see edit history)

[bellini13]

The free ones seemed to be official modules from paypal itself and I saw two options for that:

 

The free ones are NOT from Paypal, they are originally created by Prestashop. 

The USA module is not maintained by anyone, there are several issues with it, and it has not been updated in over 1 year.

The Europe module used to be maintained by a Prestashop partner, however that seems to have changed.  At this point I don't know who maintains it.

 

Paypal Europe covers Asia as well. First of all it is not clear which one you need to install: the country you are in; or the country you are selling to? I tried Paypal Europe first.

 

The country where your business is located.  However the Europe module is designed to only work in certain countries.  It was exposed about a year ago, that the module was designed to work in Countries were a commission for a sale could be captured.  If your country is not in the list, it likely means someone is not receiving a commission, and therefore they do not want you using the module.

 

There are alternative modules (paid ones), I am not aware of any other free ones.  You might try searching outside of the PS addons store, there are many alternative marketplaces

 

If you are looking for a working and supported module, I would suggest purchasing one from a reliable module provider.

[Vee.K727]

Thanks Bellini, you cleared up a lot of confusion. It seems the only reliable way would be  to use a third party module.