I am working on a mini shopping cart plugin for WordPress with Paypal integration. Its been a while since I worked with paypal – so I ran into trouble. I have a couple of sandbox accounts – and the payment goes through without any visible issues. But the IPN’s notify_url was not being called no matter what I did.

And I was not the only guy with the problem – plenty of other people have it too. I managed to solve the issue – but I decided to document the process – for the benefit of the people who fall into the same trap.

Make Sure the URL You Specified is Working

Yes, its obvious – but it needs to be said. Make sure the URL you gave as the value of notify_url is a working URL. Sample usage…

<input type=”hidden” name=”notify_url” value=”http://www.yoursite.com/cart/ipn.php” />

Here ‘http://www.yoursite.com/cart/ipn.php’ is the url – make sure it works! There is an easy way to test it – just go to IPN Testing Environment and enter your IPN notify_url there. When you submit the data, you’ll know wether the script is being called or not.

Verify the Email Address of Sandbox Account

When you make a sandbox account, you have to give a email address. But if you have selected a business account, make sure that you verify that email address. Just login using the given email and go to the home tab. There should be a ‘To do list’ to the right side. Make sure you complete all the stuff(usually just 2) there…

When you confirm your email address – remember that its simulated – you don’t have to check the actual email account. Just go to the Test Email page in Paypal sandbox itself to check the mail.

Once this is done, IPN notify_url worked for me. Hopefully, this will fix your issues as well.