Reference Transactions – Error

Hi

Last Friday a customer complained of the following error when trying to pay using the paypal options on a payment gateway using a Paypal pro form:

Error #1. User authentication failed: 11452-Merchant not enabled for reference transactions. Please contact PayPal Merchant Technical Support (www.paypal.com/mts) and request `Recurring Billing` service, and also ask to have `Reference Transactions` enabled for Recurring Billing via Express Checkout.

I’ve read other posts on this issue and have tried to follow the advice and resolve it. I have contacted paypal and requested that they enable reference transactions for billing via express checkout however I have just spoken to them and they have told me that its not something they do very often. They said that reference transactions would allow us to charge a customer any amount we wanted whenever we wanted and is only granted after a vetting process usually to much larger companies. The example he used was Skype.

Can you advise us on what the best course of action is now?

Paypal have asked that you contact them regarding the issue and said that I must be an issue with S2member and assured me that they have not changed anything.

We are afraid of being stuck in the middle with blame being passed over to each side and we are losing money on a daily basis. Help!

Would it help if we reverted back to a previous version of S2Member? or is there possibly a hack or work around we could implement?

We haven’t previously experienced issues processing recurring payments with PayPal express checkout via Pro Forms.

Thanks in advance for your help and for the great product.

Kind regards

Paul
http://www.designer-cakes.com

Hi,

Is there any updates on this? It’s becoming a real problem for us and we are keen to resolve it.

Kind regards

Paul

Thank you for reporting this important issue.

I’ve contacted Jason (Lead Developer) about this error and I’ll let you know what the issue is as soon as he gets back to me on this. I’m very sorry for the delay in response.

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for getting back to me. Is there any word from Jason? We are very keen to get this sorted as soon as possible.

Thanks

Paul

Thanks for your patience.

Sorry for the delay. Jason got back to me in relation to another post which has a similar/the same issue here:

http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/reference-transactions-now-needed-s2-dead/#post-52230

If you have more questions related to this please let us know.

Hi,

I’ve taken all the PayFlow details out from the Payflow settings and it now works.

Are there any consequences to this? It doesn’t seem like something I should do but hay its works!

Could you let me know if this is a bad idea?

Cheers

Paul, that’s fine if you don’t receive payments on your site through PayPal Pro (PayFlow Edition). You can receive payments on your site if you have the PayPal Pro that uses PayPal Pro’s API instead of PayFlow’s. Or you can not have PayPal Pro at all and only accept payments through PayPal in your pro-form (Express Checkout).

If you have PayPal Pro (PayFlow Edition) and want to receive recurring payments through them, and also Express Checkout, you’ll need to complete the integration and configuration, including having Reference Transactions enabled in your account.