Payflow Pro

Connect your merchant's Payflow Pro account to process card and ACH transactions through Preczn.

Payflow Pro is a direct processor: each merchant holds their own Payflow account, and all four Payflow credentials are stored on that merchant's connection in Preczn. There is no platform-level Payflow connection and no merchant boarding — a merchant must already have a Payflow Pro account before it can be connected.

Supported Capabilities

Capability	Status	Notes
Credit Card Transactions	Supported	Full lifecycle — sale, auth, capture, void, refund, and verify
ACH (Bank Account) Transactions	Supported	Submitted on the same endpoint as cards
Level II and Level III Data	Supported	Tax, freight, duty, and line-item detail
AVS and CVV Results	Supported	Returned on sale, auth, and verify
Immediate settlement	Supported	Every transaction is decided on the API response
Apple Pay / Google Pay	Not supported	Wallet transactions cannot be routed to Payflow Pro
Merchant Onboarding	Not supported	Merchants sign up with Payflow directly, then link their account

Supported Transaction Types

Type	Description
Sale	Authorize and capture in a single request
Auth	Authorize only (hold funds without capturing)
Capture	Capture a previous authorization, in full or in part
Void	Cancel an authorization
Refund	Return funds from a completed transaction, in full or in part
Verify	Validate a card without charging it (see Verify)

Adding Merchant Credentials

Payflow Pro requires four values, all from the merchant's Payflow account. All four are required — a connection saved without any one of them is rejected.

Credential	API field	Description
Vendor	`mid`	The merchant login ID Payflow assigned
User	`key`	The Payflow user ID; often the same value as the Vendor
Password	`secret`	The password for that user
Partner	`applicationId`	The reseller who provided the account, commonly `PayPal`

Enter them on the merchant's Payflow Pro connection in the Dashboard, or send them to the connection update endpoint — see Linking Existing Credentials. Preczn verifies all four with Payflow before saving them.

📘
The Partner value is easy to miss
Payflow's Partner identifies whoever resold the account, and it is required on every request — not optional metadata. Merchants who signed up directly with PayPal use PayPal. A merchant who came through a reseller must supply that reseller's value, or verification fails.

🚧
Characters Payflow doesn't allow
Payflow prohibits these characters in credential values: equal sign (=), apostrophe ('), dash (-), semicolon (;), less-than (<), greater-than (>), and line breaks. Preczn rejects a Payflow Pro connection whose Vendor, User, Password, or Partner contains any of them. If a merchant's password contains one, have them change it in PayPal Manager, then save the new value. These rules apply only to Payflow Pro. See PayPal's prohibited characters list.

Processing Transactions

Route transactions to Payflow Pro the same way as any other connection — through a plan or a direct connection reference on the transaction. The sections below cover the behavior specific to Payflow Pro.

Settlement Timing

Payflow Pro decides every transaction on the API response. A transaction is A (Approved), D (Declined), or E (Error) by the time the request completes — it never sits in P (Pending) waiting for a later update, and there are no status callbacks to configure.

Verify and Card Checks

A Verify on a Payflow Pro connection runs as a zero-dollar authorization, so it validates the card without moving money and without a capture to reverse.

Captures and Refunds

Captures and refunds may be for the full amount or a partial amount. A full capture uses the amount Payflow actually approved rather than the amount originally requested, which matters when an authorization was approved for less than it asked for.

AVS and CVV Results

Payflow Pro returns AVS and CVV results on sale, auth, and verify. Send the billing street address and postal code to get a meaningful AVS result, and the CVV to get a card-code result. Payflow evaluates street and postal code separately, so a partial result is possible when only one of them matches.

Value Limits

Payflow Pro caps the length of two fields, and Preczn shortens them rather than letting the transaction be rejected:

Preczn field	Limit sent to Payflow Pro
`order`	256 characters
`description`	256 characters

The full values stay intact on the Preczn transaction — only the copy sent to Payflow is shortened. If you reconcile between systems on the order number, keep it within 256 characters.

Level II and Level III Data

Payflow Pro accepts enhanced data, which can qualify commercial and purchasing-card transactions for better interchange: tax, freight, and duty amounts, plus line-item detail for each item — product code, name, quantity, price, and description.

Line-item description, unit of measure, and commodity code are combined into a single Payflow line-item description field, so all three arrive together rather than in separate fields.

See Level II Data and Level III Data for how to populate these fields.

Data Not Sent to Payflow Pro

Payflow Pro's API has no equivalent for the following. Preczn accepts them and uses them elsewhere, but they never reach Payflow:

Metadata
The shipping address — the shipping amount is sent as freight data, but shipping address fields are not

Preczn does forward the cardholder name, billing address, email, phone, and the originating IP address with each transaction.

Declines and Errors

A transaction Payflow or the issuer rejects is D (Declined), with Payflow's own response message on processorMessage and its result code on processorCode. Anything else — a connectivity problem, or a request Payflow could not process — is E (Error). The distinction matters for retry logic: an Error is worth retrying, a Decline is not.

Testing in the Sandbox

Add the merchant's Payflow Pro connection in Test Mode using their Payflow sandbox credentials.
Send transactions using the standard Preczn test cards.

To exercise declines and specific result codes against Payflow, ask PayPal for the sandbox values that trigger them.

Test and Live connections are configured separately, and Preczn routes each transaction to the matching Payflow environment based on the mode it runs in.

A Payflow account in TEST status, as shown on the merchant's PayPal Manager home page, can only run test transactions. Preczn rejects its credentials on a Live connection. Use them in Test Mode only, and have the merchant activate the account in PayPal Manager before you add their live connection.

FAQ

Where do I find these four values?

All four come from the merchant's Payflow Pro account. The Vendor is the merchant login ID chosen at signup, the User is often that same value, and the Partner identifies the reseller. A merchant who cannot locate them should ask PayPal or their reseller — Preczn cannot retrieve them.

What should I use for Partner?

PayPal for accounts opened directly with PayPal. If the merchant obtained Payflow through a reseller, use the value that reseller provided. It is required on every request, so an incorrect Partner causes verification to fail even when the other three values are right.

Is the User the same as the Vendor?

Often, yes. Payflow allows additional users under one vendor account, but many merchants only ever use the vendor login, in which case both fields carry the same value. Enter whichever user the merchant intends Preczn to transact as.

Why does saving Payflow Pro credentials fail with “Invalid connection credentials”?

Preczn sends the four values to Payflow before saving them. If Payflow rejects them, the save fails with Invalid connection credentials. Please update credentials and submit again. and the connection keeps its previous values. Payflow most often rejects credentials for one of these reasons:

User authentication failed (result code 1): the User or Password is wrong, or the user is locked or deleted in PayPal Manager.
Invalid vendor account (result code 26): the Partner and Vendor don't match a Payflow account, or the account is in TEST status and you saved it on a Live connection.

Preczn also rejects a value that contains a character Payflow prohibits, before it contacts Payflow. See Adding Merchant Credentials for the list.

To check the account status, have the merchant sign in to PayPal Manager. If the home page says the account is in TEST status, the merchant must activate it before it can take live payments. Until then, use the credentials in Test Mode only.

A save also fails when Preczn can't reach Payflow. Try again in a few minutes. If saves keep failing, contact Preczn support with the merchant ID, and we can check our logs for more detail on what Payflow returned.

Why does a connection that verified start failing with “User authentication failed”?

Payflow returns User authentication failed (result code 1) when the credentials on a request no longer match the merchant's Payflow account. The user and password on a Payflow Pro connection are usually the same login the merchant uses to sign in to the PayPal Manager portal. Preczn verifies all four values when you save them, but changes the merchant makes later in PayPal Manager, such as a new password or a removed user, don't reach Preczn. The most common causes are:

The merchant changed the user's password, or locked or deleted the user, in PayPal Manager after the connection was saved. Because the same login signs in to the portal, routine portal changes such as a password reset or removing an old user break the connection.
The merchant turned on PayPal's allowed IP address restriction for API transactions. To get the IP addresses Preczn sends requests from, contact Preczn support.

To fix it, get the current values from the merchant and save them on the connection again, in the Dashboard or through the connection update endpoint. See Linking Existing Credentials. Preczn verifies them with Payflow before saving.

How do I know when a merchant changes their Payflow Pro credentials?

You don't get a notification. PayPal doesn't tell Preczn or your platform when a merchant changes a password or removes a user in PayPal Manager. The first sign is usually a transaction that fails with User authentication failed.

To prevent interrupted payments, tell your merchants the following:

Changing the Payflow user or password in PayPal Manager, including a portal password reset, stops payments through Preczn until the connection is updated.
If they need to make a change, they should send you the new values as soon as they make it, so you can save them on the connection right away. See Linking Existing Credentials.

Can a Payflow Pro transaction come back Pending?

No. Payflow returns its decision on the API response, so every transaction is Approved, Declined, or Error by the time the request completes. There are no callbacks to wait for and no webhook to configure in Payflow.

Why is my order number shortened on the Payflow side?

Payflow's comment field accepts 256 characters, and Preczn truncates longer values rather than having the transaction rejected. The full order value stays on the Preczn transaction — only the copy sent to Payflow is shortened.

Can I take ACH payments through Payflow Pro?

Yes. Bank-account payments are submitted the same way as cards and are routed to Payflow as ACH. See ACH (Direct Debit).

Can I send Apple Pay or Google Pay transactions?

No. Wallet transactions cannot be routed to Payflow Pro. Route wallet volume to a connection that supports it — see Apple Pay on the Web and Google Pay for Web.

Can I board new merchants to Payflow Pro through Preczn?

No. Preczn connects merchants who already hold a Payflow Pro account; it does not submit applications to PayPal. Once the merchant has their four values, add them to the connection and transactions can be routed immediately.