Open Paypal in a new window - how to - and a good idea?

[jdmorrisn]

I am setting up Paypal (although I see on the forum a hundred reasons why NOT to do so). This will be temporary until I get an account for World Pay, since the stories of Paypal put me off to be honest.

But that aside, my question is that rather than the customer leave my site to go to Paypal and rather than add SSL for the API version(which I have also seen in the forums SSL present many problems) I would just like to have Paypal open in a new window. Then at least when the transaction is completed the customer can easily return to my shop. Is it possible, and how?

I saw while searching that one old thread said it was unprofessional for it to open in a new window - although I don't know why, to me it seems the obvious choice. But it didn't elaborate on how to do it.

Like I said, I don't have SSL (yet - perhaps in future when I can accepted various other forms of payment) and Paypal is a temporary fix until i get World Pay online. So any thoughts/ideas?

[rocky]

I don't understand why you would want to do this. Once payment on PayPal has completed, it automatically returns to your website, and there is a link on PayPal to cancel payment and return to your website. Opening in a new window is a bad idea, since closing the window will present the customer with the payment options again, which may confuse some customers into thinking that the payment didn't go through adn they have to pay again.

[jdmorrisn]

Ok, my misunderstanding. I haven't been able to fully test the Paypal set up yet.

From reading other threads while trying to find out th difference between API and 1.6v - it was my understanding that the Paypal 1.6v opens the site in the existing window in order to make the payment and doesn't return to the shop. Therefore once clients have paid they are still in Paypal and would have to reopen the shop in their browser.I understood that Paypal API does actually return to the shop but you have to install SSL which I do not want to do yet. Am I wrong? If so what then is the difference between API and 1.6v Paypal?

[rocky]

I think regular PayPal redirects to the PayPal website and uses PayPal's SSL certificate, whereas PayPal API stays on your own site and relies on your server's SSL certificate, but I can't be sure.