Vaulting a PayPal account will allow you to charge the account in the future without requiring your customer to re-authenticate with PayPal.

The vaulted payment flow supports the following features:

  • PayPal One Touch™
  • Select or add shipping addresses in the PayPal account
  • Select or add funding instruments in the PayPal account
  • Two factor authentication support (currently only for US, UK, CA, DE, AT, and AU)

Typical use cases for the vaulted payment flow:

  • Faster payments for repeat customers
  • Subscriptions
  • Recurring billing (e.g. automatic top-up or usage based charges)

Invoking the Vault flow

note

The examples on this page now use the PayPal Checkout component in conjunction with the PayPal JS SDK. The examples here require version 3.69.0 or higher of the Braintree JavaScript SDK.

If you are using the Braintree JavaScript SDK with the deprecated PayPal checkout.js library, review this migration guide to upgrade your integration.

An integration with our Vault would typically be used in conjunction with your standard Checkout flow. The only differences are how the PayPal JS SDK is loaded and the options you provide when tokenizing with the PayPal Checkout component.

Enable the Vault flow by setting the flow option to 'vault' and passing vault: true in the loadPayPalSDK method and using a createBillingAgreement function to create the payment resource:

// Create a PayPal Checkout component
// Create a client.
braintree.client.create({
  authorization: CLIENT_AUTHORIZATION
}, function (clientErr, clientInstance) {

  // Stop if there was a problem creating the client.
  // This could happen if there is a network error or if the authorization
  // is invalid.
  if (clientErr) {
    console.error('Error creating client:', clientErr);
    return;
  }

  // Create a PayPal Checkout component.
  braintree.paypalCheckout.create({
    client: clientInstance
  }, function (paypalCheckoutErr, paypalCheckoutInstance) {
    paypalCheckoutInstance.loadPayPalSDK({
      vault: true
    }, function () {
      paypal.Buttons({
        fundingSource: paypal.FUNDING.PAYPAL,

        createBillingAgreement: function () {
          return paypalCheckoutInstance.createPayment({
            flow: 'vault', // Required

            // The following are optional params
            billingAgreementDescription: 'Your agreement description',
            enableShippingAddress: true,
            shippingAddressEditable: false,
            shippingAddressOverride: {
              recipientName: 'Scruff McGruff',
              line1: '1234 Main St.',
              line2: 'Unit 1',
              city: 'Chicago',
              countryCode: 'US',
              postalCode: '60652',
              state: 'IL',
              phone: '123.456.7890'
            }
          });
        },

        onApprove: function (data, actions) {
          return paypalCheckoutInstance.tokenizePayment(data, function (err, payload) {
            // Submit `payload.nonce` to your server
          });
        },

        onCancel: function (data) {
          console.log('PayPal payment canceled', JSON.stringify(data, 0, 2));
        },

        onError: function (err) {
          console.error('PayPal error', err);
        }
      }).render('#paypal-button').then(function () {
        // The PayPal button will be rendered in an html element with the ID
        // `paypal-button`. This function will be called when the PayPal button
        // is set up and ready to be used
      });

    });

  });

});
This snippet uses the PayPal JS SDK. If you are using checkout.js, learn how to migrate to the PayPal JS SDK.

Use the paypalCheckoutInstance in the onApprove function of the PayPal JS SDK setup method to tokenize the PayPal account. After the customer completes the consent flow and the PayPal pop-up closes, successful tokenization will return a payment method nonce.

Send the nonce to your server and use a Braintree server SDK to call PaymentMethod.create, which creates a PayPal payment method in your Vault. Alternatively, use Transaction.sale to create a transaction.

Collecting device data

Collecting device data from your customers is required when initiating non-recurring transactions from Vault records. Collecting and passing this data with transactions will help reduce decline rates.

To collect device data for PayPal, use the dataCollector component. If you're using script tags to load files, make sure to include:

HTML 
<script src="https://js.braintreegateway.com/web/3.76.2/js/data-collector.min.js"></script>

You must also pass the paypal: true option to braintree.dataCollector.create. This should be done in the callback of your client.create call:

var myDeviceData;

braintree.client.create({
  authorization: 'TOKEN',
}, function (err, clientInstance) {
  braintree.dataCollector.create({
    client: clientInstance,
    paypal: true
  }, function (err, dataCollectorInstance) {
    if (err) {
      // Handle error
      return;
    }
    // At this point, you should access the dataCollectorInstance.deviceData value and provide it
    // to your server, e.g. by injecting it into your form as a hidden input
    myDeviceData = dataCollectorInstance.deviceData;
  });

  // Initialize your PayPal Checkout component here
  braintree.paypalCheckout.create(/* ... */);
});

To cleanly reset your integration, call teardown() on the dataCollectorInstance object.

JavaScript 
dataCollectorInstance.teardown();

Change payment method button

The PayPal button can be rendered as a Change payment method button for vaulted customers.

  1. Use a client token generated with a customer ID that has a vaulted PayPal Billing Agreement when initializing the Braintree client instance
  2. Set autoSetDataUserIdToken: true when initializing the Braintree PayPal Checkout instance
  3. Set dataAttributes.amount when using the Braintree PayPal Checkout instance to load the PayPal SDK
// Create a client.
braintree.client.create({
  authorization: CLIENT_TOKEN_ENCODED_WITH_CUSTOMER_ID
}, function (clientErr, clientInstance) {

  // Create a PayPal Checkout component.
  braintree.paypalCheckout.create({
    autoSetDataUserIdToken: true,
    client: clientInstance
  }, function (paypalCheckoutErr, paypalCheckoutInstance) {
    paypalCheckoutInstance.loadPayPalSDK({
      dataAttributes: {
        amount: "100.00"
      }
    }, function () {
      paypal.Buttons({
        fundingSource: paypal.FUNDING.PAYPAL,

        createOrder: function () {
          return paypalCheckoutInstance.createPayment({
            //...
          });
        },

        onApprove: function (data, actions) {
          return paypalCheckoutInstance.tokenizePayment(data, function (err, payload) {
            // Submit `payload.nonce` to your server
          });
        },

        onCancel: function (data) {
          console.log('PayPal payment canceled', JSON.stringify(data, 0, 2));
        },

        onError: function (err) {
          console.error('PayPal error', err);
        }
      }).render('#paypal-button').then(function () {
        // The PayPal button will be rendered in an html element with the ID
        // `paypal-button`. This function will be called when the PayPal button
        // is set up and ready to be used
      });

    });

  });

});
This snippet uses the PayPal JS SDK. If you are using checkout.js, learn how to migrate to the PayPal JS SDK.

Country and language support

The Vault flow is available to merchants in all countries that we support. The language in the UI will automatically adjust based on the customer's country.

Currency presentment

In the Vault flow itself, the transaction currency and amount are not displayed to the customer. It is up to you to display these details in your checkout flow somewhere (e.g. cart page, order review page, etc.). Our Server-Side guide outlines which currencies are supported for PayPal transactions.

Next Page: Server-side →