Ok, I am not looking for detailed code, just trying to put together a viable strategy, and need to understand if I pinpointed the right technology for someone else to actually deal with.

Here is what I'm doing: Let's say I have a e-greeting card company and I want offer the sender the opportunity to 'add some money' (via paypal) to their $1 greeting card, as an additional gift to the user... the same way you might stuff a 20$ bill in a physical card. But here is my issue: I don't want to charge the sender $1 for the card + $20 for the gift = $21... I want to charge the user $1 for the card, and facilitate a second transaction to their friend via paypal, so I'm not liable for the whole transaction if there was fraud.  Make sense?

Does anyone have any experience with this?  They have 5 million options over there... is this the right solution?

bingo.  Guys, you should make a mental note on this one... this is how you split affiliate commissions on sales. 

Didn't know this was possible with Paypal.. good to know. Thanks DB

Has this been launched yet? I can't find anything on the paypal website for adaptive or chained api, just in the news. Do you have a link?

It's called the 'adaptive payments api', and it embraces multi-platform transactions...

https://www.x.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadBody/3036-102-1-3412/PP_AdaptivePayments.pdf

...this is the direct line to the AdaptivePayments Geek Squad: 866-428-0256