Paypal Adaptive Payments (Chained) - Unilateral receiver not allowed in chained payment

Question

I have been trying to implement split payments using the Paypal Adaptive Payments API. I have got a simple parallel payment to work, however this shows both split payments to the buyer.

Basically I am selling a membership. Our local association should get 75% of the funds and 25% is passed on to the governing body. The member should only see the total amount as being a 2015 membership so I started to look into chained payments instead. This on the face of it looks like a very simple code change but is causing me issues in relation to unilateral payments.

I am implementing this in php.

So here is the paypal send method

function PaypalSend($payment_details, $api_function){

    // initial endpoint that starts the transaction
    $paypalInitialEndpoint = 'https://svcs.sandbox.paypal.com/AdaptivePayments/';

    // set http headers
    $headers = array(
        'Connection: Close',
        'X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-USERID: testseller_api1.nipf.com',
        'X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-PASSWORD: 1381912839',
        'X-PAYPAL-SECURITY-SIGNATURE: AzykGe5AzfK.mJFMRzBwIcTap-LcAsmsP4AhYzk1Y-07mh-xPLc-goK3',
        'X-PAYPAL-APPLICATION-ID: APP-80W284485P519543T',
        'X-PAYPAL-REQUEST-DATA-FORMAT: JSON',
        'X-PAYPAL-RESPONSE-DATA-FORMAT: JSON'
    );

    // setup curl request and http headers
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $paypalInitialEndpoint . $api_function);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, FALSE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, FALSE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, FALSE);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($payment_details));
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);

    if(!($res = curl_exec($ch)) ) 
    {   
        error_log(curl_error($ch));    
        curl_close($ch);    
        exit;
    }

    curl_close($ch);

    return json_decode($res, TRUE);     
}

And here is my chained payment method. This code needs a lot of refactoring but was fully functional with the parallel payments with only minor changes to this current code.

function sendChainedPayment(){

    $purchase_details_array = array(
        "actionType" => "PAY",
        "currencyCode" => "GBP",
        "feesPayer" => "PRIMARYRECEIVER",
        "memo" => "blah blah blah",
        "receiverList" => array(
            "receiver" => array(
                array(
                    "amount" => "30.00", 
                    "email" => "testseller@nipf.com",
                    "primary" => "true"
                ),
                array(
                    "amount" => "10.00", 
                    "email" => "testseller@gbpf.com",
                    "primary" => "false"
                )           
            )
        ),
        "returnUrl" => "http://localhost/membershipSuccess.php",
        "cancelUrl" => "http://localhost/membershipCancel.php",
        "requestEnvelope" => array(
            "errorLanguage" => "en_UK",
            "detailLevel" => "ReturnAll"
        )
    );

    $response = PaypalSend($purchase_details_array, "Pay");

    //echo json_encode($response) . "<br /><br />";

    $payKey = $response['payKey'];

    $payment_details = array(
        "requestEnvelope" => array(
            "errorLanguage" => "en_UK",
            "detailLevel" => "ReturnAll"
        ),
        "payKey" => $payKey,
        "receiverOptions" => array(
            array(
                "receiver" => array("email" => "testseller@nipf.com"),
                "invoiceData" => array(
                    "item" => array(
                        array(
                            "name" => "Membership 2015",
                            "price" => "30.00",
                            "identifier" => "Membership 2015: joe bloggs"
                        )
                    )                                               
                )
            ),
            array(
                "receiver" => array("email" => "testseller@gbpf.com"),
                "invoiceData" => array(
                    "item" => array(
                        array(
                            "name" => "Membership 2015 (Fee)",
                            "price" => "10.00",
                            "identifier" => "Membership 2015 (Fee): joe bloggs"
                        )
                    )                                               
                )
            )
        )
    );

    $response = PaypalSend($payment_details, "SetPaymentOptions");

    //echo json_encode($response) . "<br /><br />";

    $paypalCustomerUrl = 'https://www.sandbox.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_ap-payment&paykey=' . $payKey;

    echo $paypalCustomerUrl;

    //header('Location: ' . $paypalCustomerUrl);        
}

I am getting the following response JSON with the first callout. I think this is to do with the accounts being just sandbox accounts rather than real accounts but how am I meant to test this in the sandbox if the accounts all have to be real accounts? In this case the account used as the API account is the primary receiver.

{"responseEnvelope":{"timestamp":"2015-02-04T14:37:26.598-08:00","ack":"Failure","correlationId":"749bd1d709e76","build":"15089777"},"error":[{"errorId":"520009","domain":"PLATFORM","subdomain":"Application","severity":"Error","category":"Application","message":"Account Account not found. Unilateral receiver not allowed in chained payment is restricted","parameter":["Account not found. Unilateral receiver not allowed in chained payment"]}]}

Answer 1

I was getting the same error message, and I fixed it by making sure that the 2 email addresses that I was sending payments to in the API call were both sandbox accounts. They didn't exist as real email addresses, but they did need to exist as paypal accounts. (Previously I was sending them to 2 actual live paypal accounts that didn't exist in the sandbox).

Judging by the error message, " Account not found . Unilateral receiver not allowed in chained payment", it just can't find your account, probably because they are not sandbox accounts.