I received an email this week from my favorite payment processing gateway, PayPal, notifying users of a scheduled outage. If you are using PayPal to process transactions, this is definitely something to be aware of:

We’re planning to upgrade the PayPal data center on Monday the 18th of June. The upgrade is scheduled to begin at 9 PM PDT and last for approximately two hours. During this time, there will be a PayPal system-wide service interruption. The PayPal site will be unavailable and the majority of PayPal features will not be functioning. You will not be able to process payments during this time.

You do not need to do anything during the data center upgrade. Once the upgrade is complete, you will be able to conduct business as you normally would. However, a small number of merchants may need to reconfigure PayPal’s IP address if was previously hard-coded into their API calls and/or firewall settings. Please see instructions below.

Here’s what you should expect during the service interruption:

If customers attempt to pay you with PayPal during the upgrade they will get the following message:

“The PayPal website is currently unavailable. We are working actively to restore access to the site as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please check the PayPal System Board for possible updates.”
Note: The PayPal System Board can be found at http://announcements.paypal.com/us/ and this will be accessible through the message above.

If your customers click on the PayPal System Board link they will see the following message:

“PayPal is currently performing a data center upgrade. This upgrade began at 9:00 PM PDT and is scheduled to run for approximately 2 hours. The PayPal site and a majority of our features will be unavailable during this time.”
Note: We will be updating the PayPal System Board with additional information as we monitor the upgrade.

eBay sellers will see little impact on their auctions as the eBay website will be unaffected during the upgrade. Auctions will continue as normal. However, your buyers will be unable to process a payment through PayPal during this time.

If you elect to list your item(s) with the “Immediate Payment Required” option there will some inconvenience as the buyer will be unable to process their payment until after the upgrade has been completed.

You will be unable to log into the PayPal system to check your PayPal account status, including verification of payments received.

We will also be upgrading our internal tools, so we will be unable to access your account information during this time.

You will be unable to receive funds through any website buttons or through the PayPal site directly.

After the upgrade, buyers and sellers will be able to interact with PayPal as they normally would.
Here’s what you need to do if you hard-coded PayPal’s IP address:

If you have hard-coded PayPal’s IP addresses into your API calls and/or firewall settings, you may need to reconfigure these settings after the upgrade. Here is the new IP address you will need to upgrade to:
https://ppmts.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ppdts.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=92

If you need assistance in reconfiguring the IP address change, please contact PayPal Merchant Technical Support at http://www.paypal.com/mts

Rest assured, we will be monitoring the scheduled upgrade very closely to ensure that we return to normal functionality as soon as possible. Again, after the upgrade, you will be able to conduct business as you normally would.

PayPal continually makes improvements to our systems and platforms so we may continue to provide you with the best online payment processing solution.

You are a valued PayPal customer and we appreciate your business.

Best regards,

PayPal Merchant Support

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 12:11 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.