A possible solution to 10001 - Timeout processing request error -Paypal Direct Payment

Paypal is one of the largest e-payment service provider in the world. In a recent project, I was tasked to implement Paypal payment solution for the first time. The site specifically required Paypal's Direct Payment solution through APIs. Everything was going fine until I hit the "10001 - Timeout processing request" error. My attempted solutions ranged from playing around with cURL parameters as suggested Here to attempting transaction on the live Paypal URL using a valid card number. However, none of it worked. Then I used code that I borrowed from one of Smashing Magazine's article and upon closer inspection I found that the expiry date format of my credit card was wrong. Paypal's DoDirectPayment API expects expiry date to be without any separators (072017 instead of 07/2017 or 07-2017). Once i got that right, my transaction went through without a hitch.

Bottom Line: when using Paypal, one has to be very careful about that format in which the data is being sent.

Here is a link to a working example of my code.You ll have to put in API credentials in it though :P.

Paypal Direct Payment Code