Good morning, I'm working with DoExpressCheckout's Payment Status response for an InstantPaymentOnly Sale.
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/api/merchant/DoExpressCheckoutPayment_API_Operation_NVP/
By PAYMENTINFO_n_PAYMENTSTATUS all possible responses are shown, Completed-Funds-Held is the latest addition.
I'm providing a service that expires and must be used by a certain time. If the payments final status is not known by the time the service must start, its looks like we're going to have to collect payment (again) in person and refund the online payment. Needless to say, that doesn't sound good.
Q. Could Completed-Funds-Held result in funds never being deposited to the main balance?
The documentation for that particular status lists two possible response codes that go along with Completed-Funds-Held: newsellerpaymenthold (not applicable in my case) and paymenthold which vaguely states "A hold is placed on the merchant's transaction for a reason not listed."
Basically is Completed-Funds-Held a "successful" transaction where the purchaser can receive his product without risk of the seller never receiving payment?
EDIT: Is Completed-Funds-Held a final status if the payment is successful? Or will a Completed IPN request come if and when the hold is settled?
Those payments will eventually become available. What you should do is setup an IPN solution so that you can automatically update your system when a payment hold is released. The same would be true for things like e-checks where the payment status is simply pending and then clears a few days later.