I want to integrate paypal to my website and ask users to enter paypal account for commission pay out. How can I check if their account exists on paypal? I prefer NOT to send them $0.01 or it's the only way to check account?
It should validate it automatically while user sign ups to the website.
you can ask them to enter the email address they use in paypal. and if they dont have an account on paypal, you can still send them funds to any email they enter. Paypal will take care of getting them to create an paypal account with that email id and show them their funds.
all you may have to ensure is that they enter the correct email id.. maybe an email address verification step could do the trick.
Try using the Paypal AddressVerify API: https://www.x.com/docs/DOC-1161
AddressVerify can also check that your user's address and ZIP/postal code are correct.
Note that access to the AddressVerify API isn't provided by Paypal by default. You have to file a customer support request to get access to it in the sandbox and then contact them again to be considered for approval on the live site.