Restricting PayPal Sales

[samwoodfin]

If I completely leave a region off the shipping part of my profile, does that mean that sales won't be accepted from that area?

If not, does anyone know how I can prevent sales to certain areas?

[stymiee]

Do you run Apache? If so, you can block entire areas by IP address.

Blocking High Risk Countries From Using Your Website (http://www.merchant-account-services.org/blog/blocking-high-risk-countries-from-using-your-website/)

[samwoodfin]

I appreciate the response, stymiee, but I can't go that route; I'd end up with the entire world, except for 49 of the US states, blocked from my blog.

[stymiee]

You definitely can modify that to work how you want. You just need to know which IP addresses to remove from the list. I believe this is where you can get a database of IP addresses: FREE Updated IP to Country Database (http://software77.net/cgi-bin/ip-country/geo-ip.pl)

[samwoodfin]

I'm not being clear enough.

I need to block sales, only, to everywhere outside the U.S., due to shipping costs; and within my home state, because I don't have a sales tax license.

I need to know how to do this via PayPal, because I don't want to block all of those people from my website. Especially since I have friends that would be blocked!

I appreciate the response, though. :)

[stymiee]

So you want them to be able to visit your site but not order from it?

[SarahG]

Never seen a way to restrict countries in PayPal. Taking stymiee's idea, you could take an IP database, check the user's ID and ensure they only come from within the US (omitting your state), then display the payment link to those who pass the criteria.

If you want to go one step further you could request their details on your site and force them to only select one of the 49 states you can ship to. A notice below the sales form stating you can only accept orders from one of these states will stop all legit buyers. Then you can use the form details to prepopulate the paypal form.

[samwoodfin]

@stymiee -- Yes. My blog and the "sub-blog" (so to speak) where I'm trying to set up the PayPal thing are all on the same site. Plus, I'd like to eventually get that sales tax license.

@SarahG -- I'll see if the restrictions on my site will allow me to implement what you've suggested. If not, I'll just go back to the money order plan.

Thanks to both of you. Sorry for not being more clear in my initial post.

[Jeremy]

You could just put a disclaimer on your site that says "If you are ordering from an unapproved location, you can die in a fire."

[samwoodfin]

xD I may do that!

[SarahG]

@SarahG -- I'll see if the restrictions on my site will allow me to implement what you've suggested. If not, I'll just go back to the money order plan.

You'd need PHP and MySQL, or ASP and a database of some sort (whatever goes with ASP or .NET). If you've got something like that then it's possible.

As mentioned. The other option is just to allow them to go to a form on your site where you force the choice of a US state and the country is hardcoded as the US. That'd be straightforward HTML with a get method for the form and the correct input names for each field. Then when they click 'pay via paypal' the paypal URL will get the input names and values appended to it and paypal can prefill their form.

At the very most, someone would complete your form, get to paypal and then change the URL to their own address. If someone is prepared to do that then they deserve to pay for something they can't get!

[samwoodfin]

Thanks, Sarah! I honestly don't know what TypePad uses. I know it doesn't support PHP, but I'm pretty sure I can use forms. I'm reading up on get methods, right now...

[SarahG]

You just need a form with the method attribute as 'get' and the action goes to PayPal's payment page eg

<form method="get" action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr">

Then your form will have a few hidden inputs as per a normal paypal button, so your paypal email, the amount they're paying etc. Then on the standard form you'll ask them for their personal details using the same fieldnames as listed on the paypal site at

HTML Variables for Buy Now Buttons (https://www.paypal.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_std-variable-ref-buy-now.html#HTMLVariablesforPrepoluatingPayPalPayment Pages)

Of course the country you'll hardcode in to the site and add it into a hidden input, and the state will be a select list. This way no one can get around it. Of course a message below or above the form stating that's only where you'll ship to will help too.

In fact you could try using method="post" and it should possibly work as you can do either with PayPal. If you can use the post method use that as it's a tiny bit safer, mainly because it's simple for someone to change their details in the URL when get is used, but with post you need to know how to manipulate it.

Anyway, that will all work as plain HTML, no scripting required :)

Actually, thinking about it now, you may find it easier to go to PayPal, create a buy now button for your site (which will create the form with post as the method, and the correct URL and hidden input details) and then just add in the additional visible inputs for the buyer's name and address, and add the hidden country input, and that should do the trick :)

[samwoodfin]

You rock, Sarah! That last bit is the sort of thing I was looking for! Thanks bunches!