PayPal

[TOC]

Overview

The PayPal payment plugin allows customers to pay for their booking via their PayPal account or a credit/debit card through PayPal's checkout. It is the most commonly used payment plugin for OS Calendar.

Plugin name: os_paypal

Setup

  1. Log in to the Joomla back-end and go to Components → OS Calendar → Manage Payment Plugins.
  2. Click on os_paypal (or select it and click Edit).
  3. Configure the plugin parameters (see below).
  4. Set Published to Yes.
  5. Click Save.

Plugin Parameters

Parameter Description
PayPal Mode Set to Test Mode to use the PayPal Sandbox for testing, or Live Mode for real payments.
PayPal Email The email address of your PayPal business account. Payments will be sent to this address.
PayPal Currency The currency code for PayPal transactions (e.g. USD, EUR, GBP). Must match the currency accepted by your PayPal account.
Locale The PayPal locale for the checkout page (e.g. en_US, en_GB). Affects the language shown on the PayPal checkout page.
Use New PayPal IPN Verification Set to Yes to use PayPal's recommended ipnpb.paypal.com endpoint for Instant Payment Notification (IPN) verification. Requires your server to support TLS 1.2. Recommended for all new setups.

Testing

To test PayPal payments without real money:

  1. Set PayPal Mode to Test Mode.
  2. Create a PayPal Sandbox account at https://developer.paypal.com.
  3. Use the sandbox business account email as your PayPal Email.
  4. Submit a test booking on the front-end and complete payment using a sandbox buyer account.

How It Works

  1. Customer submits the booking form and selects PayPal as the payment method.
  2. OS Calendar sends the order details to PayPal.
  3. Customer is redirected to the PayPal checkout page.
  4. After payment, PayPal sends an IPN (Instant Payment Notification) to OS Calendar.
  5. OS Calendar verifies the IPN and updates the order status to Confirmed.
  6. Confirmation emails are sent to the customer and administrator.

IPN URL

OS Calendar automatically handles the PayPal IPN callback. No manual IPN configuration is needed in your PayPal account — PayPal sends the IPN to the return URL provided by OS Calendar.

Note: If your server uses a non-standard TLS configuration, you may need to contact your hosting provider to ensure TLS 1.2 is supported before enabling the new IPN verification.