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I'm working on a project where users will be allowed to send donations among each other.

I'd like to integrate it with Paypal instead of reinventing the wheel and building my own donation system, but due to the nature of the system, I will need to verify that a donation of X dollars was sent from person A to person B.

Is this possible with Paypal, or am I out of luck?

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    I don't this this is possible with PayPal if you are planning on this happening for lots of users - as each user would have to setup merchant accounts. But if it's between a couple of known entities then look at PayPal's Instant Payment Notification (IPN) for getting payment verification. – brodie Sep 05 '11 at 23:07

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You will need to look at PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (IPN).

Within the call to PayPal to handle the donation/payment, you can specify the URL for a "Listener", which is a script which will be contacted by PayPal with details on the payment, and can then authenticate that payment against PayPal to ensure that it is accurate/confirmed/not faked.

Within the data passed back to the Listener is the email addresses of the Payer and the Payee, along with the amount paid, fees charged, etc.

If you are acting as an intermediary to the two parties, and so long as the payment are made through the form/site you control, then you should be able to use the IPN to get details of those payments and then use that data however you wish to.

Luke Stevenson
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