Changing Where PayPal IPN Emails Payment Notifications

If you use PayPal for receiving payments online you are likely using PayPal Instant Payment Notification (IPN) as well. This is very useful as it results in an email being sent to the email address you specify whenever a payment is received via PayPal.

However, the email address that you receive these payment notifications at is not necessarily the email address you have configured within your PayPal account for receiving notifications. To set or change the email address to which these IPNs are sent you need to modify the code in the file you point to in the hidden ‘notify_url’ that you set in the form you use for posting to PayPal.

e.g. if you’re using PHP  the field might look like:

<input type=”hidden” name=”notify_url” value=”http://www.mynerdysite.com/paypal_ipn.php”>

In the above case, paypal_ipn.php is the file that gets called after payment has been made. Within this file is the code that send the actual notification email. To set the email address that will receive the payment notification you change the $from variable.

Note that if you want to change where the actual receipt from PayPal gets sent you need to change your primary business email address and then update this in the hidden ‘business’ field in the form you use to post to PayPal.