Website subscriptions via Express Checkout Recurring Payments

Question

I'm trying to implement a recurring subscription to a website using PayPal Express Checkout Recurring Payments. One requirement is that creating the initial subscription should be as quick as possible: once the customer confirms the purchase, the merchant should receive the money and activate the subscription in a couple of minutes tops.

As far as I understand, I have the following options to go with:

1. use CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile only, with billing starting now
2. use CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile with initial payment, starting now
3. use DoExpressCheckoutPayment followed by CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile starting now + 1 billing period

Initial testing in the sandbox has shown that plain CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile schedules payments once a day, which rules this option out. Option 2 (Recurring Payments Profile with an initial payment) looked promising -- payments usually went through in a couple of seconds -- until the initial payments started being delayed by half an hour or more.

So, a couple of questions:

What is the intented way to implement on-line recurring payments via PayPal?

Does the sandbox share payment scheduling behavior with the live site?

Answer 1

What is the intented way to implement on-line recurring payments via PayPal? Answer:The recurring payment via Express Checkout is a good way. The subscription button via Website Payments Standard is also a good way which is more easy to implement.

Does the sandbox share payment scheduling behavior with the live site? Answer:yes, sandbox has the same payment scheduling behavior as live.

BTW, if you want initial payment be charged right away, you should use Option 3, initial payment will be changed right away after DoExpressCheckoutPayment. Option 2 only guarantee initial payment be charged in 24 hours.