Invoicing

PayPal Invoicing APIs provide programmatic access to PayPal Invoicing services, enabling you to easily build an online payment solution to meet your business needs. PayPal offers both REST and SOAP Invoicing APIs.

Recommendation for new integrations

To insure that you are able to take advantage of all future enhancements and capabilities, PayPal recommends using the REST Invoicing API for new integrations.

Overview

You can use the Invoicing APIs to create invoices that are customized to your exact business needs. Once created, you can send an invoice to a customer. When you do, PayPal sends an email message to your customer that includes a link to your invoice. The provided link enables the customer to view the invoice on the PayPal website. The customer can choose to pay the invoice with PayPal, a check, a debit card, or a credit card.

Invoicing APIs enable you to automate your accounts receivable workflow. You can verify the status of online invoice payments or you can use record-payment and refund-payment APIs to track offline payments, such as cash and checks. A reminder API is available to remind customers of overdue payments. You can also perform other management functions such as search, viewing invoice details, updating, canceling, and deleting invoices. You can also use PayPal’s Instant Payment Notification (IPN) service to automatically notify you of online invoice payments. To learn more about the IPN service, see the IPN Integration Guide.

The REST API also supports the generation of a QR code, enabling you to display a QR code on your paper invoices. Customers could then scan an invoice with their smart phone and pay through PayPal’s mobile optimized payment experience.

Use cases

The invoicing APIs are flexible enough to meet a wide variety of billing needs, including:

Move your billing and payment processes from paper to the cloud. Customers will appreciate how easy and secure it is to pay.
Couple PayPal Invoicing APIs with PayPal’s other payment APIs to support phone and email based orders. All you need is your customer’s email address to collect card and shipping information.
Develop industry-specific invoicing applications.
Integrate with complimentary software such as inventory management, CRM software, and more.
Enable a partner service provider to manage your invoices. When partner service providers call the Invoicing APIs on a merchant's behalf, the provider uses Log In with PayPal to obtain the merchant's authorization. To learn more about Login with PayPal, see Integrate Log In with PayPal.

Availability

Any account type can use PayPal Invoicing, but you must have a PayPal Premier account or Business account to use the Invoicing APIs. PayPal does not charge a fee to use the Invoicing APIs. You can use the Invoicing APIs in any country where PayPal is accepted.

The fee for receiving payments varies by country. There are also fees for currency conversion and to receive payments from another country. For details, see:

Support, documentation, and other resources

Reference and other resources are available at the following locations: