How To Setup PayPal Mass Payments

Pay affiliates using PayPal Mass Payments

Shakima avatar
Written by Shakima
Updated over a week ago

Very Important Note: Effective December 1st, 2022, new merchants are ineligible to start using this feature. Please reference either our PayPal Payouts integration or our Trolley integration as alternatives


PayPal is only offering their Mass Payment Integration in certain markets, and has replaced it with their Payouts API in the United States and other markets. If your business is eligible to use Payouts, we recommend following our Payouts integration guide instead.

However, if Mass Payments is still offered in your locale you can follow the steps in this article to get integrated. Once done you’ll be able to pay affiliates in bulk with just a few clicks.

A few notes before getting started:

  1. You must have a PayPal Business account to enable this integration.

  2. You will need to contact PayPal to enable Mass Payments for your account prior to sending your first payment. PayPal requires voice verification before enabling the Mass Payments API for your account, and the process typically takes about a day.

Integrating your Refersion account with Mass Payments:

From PayPal

To start, log in to your PayPal Business account here, click on your name in the top right corner, and select Account Settings:

Once there, find the API access section and click Update:

On the next screen, scroll down to NVP/SOAP API integration (Classic). If you’ve set this up previously, you’ll see “Manage API credentials.” Otherwise, the link will say “Request API credentials.” Click on whichever one you see - both links take you to the same place.

Click “Show" to view your API Username, API Password, and API Signature. You’ll need to copy them for the next step in Refersion, and enter those credentials respectively into Refersion. This will allow us to securely store and use them to issue Mass Payments into your account:

From Refersion

Open a new tab, log in to Refersion, and navigate to Account > Settings > PayPal Mass Payments. (If you’ve signed up recently and you do not see this option, send a message to our Customer Success team at [email protected] and ask to have your account switched to Mass Payments.)

From the Mass Payments screen, make sure the Enable PayPal payments through API setting is set to “Yes” and complete the Your PayPal account ID (email) field.

Next, enter the API Username, API Password, and API Signature you grabbed from PayPal, and enter those credentials where shown. These credentials will be securely stored within your Refersion account and used to issue Mass Payments.

Enter an email subject line for payment recipients (for an email notification sent from PayPal). Check the boxes underneath this line to agree to the terms, and click Save Changes:

Important Step:

In order for Refersion to track and display the status of a Payment, you’ll need to enter a special notification URL in PayPal. Copy the Instant Payment Notification URL from the grey box and navigate back to PayPal.

From PayPal

Navigate back to Your Name > Account Settings and scroll down to Payment & Services > Website payments, find the Instant Payment Notifications section, and click Update.

Paste the notification URL you copied from Refersion into the Notifications URL field, enable IPN messages, and click Save.

REMINDER: PayPal requires verbal confirmation to enable the Mass Payments API for your PayPal account, so you MUST contact PayPal to complete this integration!

Once you’ve confirmed with PayPal, follow the steps in this article to test the integration.

Questions or issues? Get in touch at [email protected].

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