On my website members can buy a virtual currency. Sometimes when a member buys the virtual currency there is a delay before it shows up in their account. I'm trying to make this delay not occur. The delay is usually from 10-30 minutes with the odd payment taking over an hour to show up.
The process is like this: the member is taken to PayPal to buy the virtual currency. Right after they pay, PayPal sends the payment information to my server. Once my server receives the payment details then the amount of virtual currency purchased shows up in that members account.
The delay is when the server is waiting for PayPal to send the payment information.
Does anyone have an idea of how this could be fixed so there is no delay?
You could use PDT (http://www.paypal.com/PDT), this allows you to receive the payment status when the user returns to your site.
See: Paypal notify_url and return_url. Receiving variables without IPN using PHP