Normally the customer would need to click the “Return to Merchant” button on the payment confirmation (Thank you) page. To get the redirect to happen automatically, you’ll need to turn on “Auto Return”. Instructions for turning this on are here:
To use PDT, you must activate PDT and Auto Return in your PayPal account profile. You must also acquire a PDT identity token, which is used in all PDT communication you send to PayPal.
Follow these steps to configure your account for PDT:
- Log in to your PayPal account.
- Click the Profile subtab.
- Click My selling tools in the Left Preferences column.
- Click on Update link from Website Payment Preferences.
- Under Auto Return for Website Payments, click the On radio button.
- For the Return URL, enter the URL on your site that will receive the transaction ID posted by PayPal after a customer payment.
- Under Payment Data Transfer, click the On radio button.
- Click Save.
- Click again Click on Update link from Website Payment Preferences.
- Scroll down to the Payment Data Transfer section of the page to view your PDT identity token.
To get the customer’s information to be sent along with the redirect, you’ll need to use Payment Data Transfer (PDT). Keep in mind that this feature does require the browser to redirect to your page. This means that if the buyer closes their browser before the redirect, you won’t receive the information. It’s best to only use PDT to populate your website order confirmation or thank you page with dynamic info. If you need that information for other reasons, we recommend using Instant Payment Notifications (IPN) which are asynchronous meaning it’s server to server and doesn’t depend on a browser redirect.