PayPal IPN malfunction: some e-commerce sites affected

A problem occurred with PayPal's payment verification system causing devastation on some of the e-commerce sites utilizing PayPal as a payment option. The malfunction effected the instant payment notification making order processing impossible for more than 2 days.

"We can't accept payments done with PayPal which is a really large share of our payments since most of our customers are from America and PayPal is almost a de facto standard or means for online payment there," Rikard Froberg, technical director of eClassical.com wrote in an email. "The customer knows nothing about this, orders and pays but never gets the goods he paid for, or gets them very late (for instant delivery, the patience is very short) so it looks like the store ripping the customer off."

The problem was attributed to the updating process of the instant payment notification (IPN) system and delayed notification of PayPal B2B customers. Amanda Pires, the spokeswoman for PayPal, said that the problem of not receiving IPN affected only a "percentage of merchants a percentage of the time. We are looking at this as a high priority fix," she said. "We've been working around the clock. We're hoping to have a fix as soon as possible."

At this moment the problem is fixed, but the situation is still causing a lot of discussions and complaints.