Had a nice little custom button with a few parameters I was POSTing to PayPal (and getting POSTed back via IPN) a few years ago working fine. Payments were disabled for several years, but now my client wants to resume subscriptions with their new campaign.
I switched back to the sandbox hostname/merchant accounts, did a sandbox transaction with a test Visa card, and all was well.
Switched it to the live hostname/merchant account, went to do another test with a real Visa, but noticed that not only has the real PayPal site been completely rebranded/redesigned, they now seem to be forcing you to create a PayPal account: on the sandbox, there's a blurb with a link that says "continue" which takes you right to the credit card/billing information (this is identical to what the live PayPal site used to look like a few years ago).
NOTE: The merchant account has changed; I'm not sure if that matters or not and/or if there's any settings in there I need to change.
Question: is this the way it is now with PayPal? I can't seem to find any official information that says yes/no. Besides the Express, is there any other IPN method that'll work here or is this a policy thing at PayPal? I'd hate to rewrite my working/tested code, but this isn't going to fly with my client.
Yahel's answer is incorrect: I called PayPal, and they explained that the following conditions must be met in order to accept non-PayPal payments:
The business email address must be confirmed. You can check by going to Profile > Email.
PayPal Account Optional must be checked:
Go to www.paypal.com.au and log in to your Business account.
Click 'Profile icon' near the top right of the page (next to "Log out" button)
Click "Profile & settings"
Click ‘My selling tools.’
Click ‘Update' beside 'Website preferences.’
Select 'On' under 'PayPal Account Optional' near the bottom of the page.
Click 'Save.'
Yes paypal has been forcing users to create an account for a long time now. Before that you could use a credit card up to 10 times and then it would force you to create an account anyway.
The reason you are seeing the old branding in your sandbox is probably because it is you old sandbox on an old paypal server.
Last I tried there was no way around this new policy.
But djechelon is right, they have an excellent customer service, give them a call.
PayPal does force people to create accounts, even when they want to just make a single payment. I was puzzled by this situation too: I was choosing the option to pay without a PayPal account, but still was forced to provide all the private details enough for PayPal to create an account for me against my wishes. Very sneaky of PayPal! Then I found this page and that explained a lot.
This is the message I received in my PayPal Account:
PayPal Account Optional
When this feature is turned on, your customers will go through an optimized checkout experience. This feature is available for Buy Now, Donations, and Shopping Cart buttons, but not for Subscription buttons.
So you cannot provide a regular "Subscribe" experience to non-PayPal customers. I believe you must pay the $19.99 a month "Enhanced Subscription" for this.
PayPal Has a Purchasing Limit of $3,000 for "Guests".
I ran into this issue as well and #gravyface was bang on with setting your account preferences. However, my customers were still having issues paying without a PayPal account.
I called PayPal and it turns out they have a $3,000 (cumulative) purchasing limit for "guests". My customer's invoice was for $7,000 so even though my preferences were set to make the PayPal account optional, it still would not go through.
Hope that helps others.
JP
Related
I am trying to test paypal buttons on a website using a paypal sandbox merchant account.
According to the docs i should be able to create a Subscription Button but the option seems to be missing in my Account:
Docs:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/paypal-payments-standard/integration-guide/subscribe_step_1/
Since i couldnt find anything about this problem, i thought it might have something to do with my sandbox account settings. So i allready did the following:
Made sure the account is valid, has a credit card and banking information
Created a new account with some amount of balance
Tried to get a paypal plus subscription for the sandbox accounts (did not work)
Created the button by go to tools-> recurring subscriptions->Create Subscription Button (additonal options): Got redirected and again the option was missing
Is this a problem with my account ? And if so, what do I have to do to make it work?
Well i finaly found out that this is kind of a paypal problem. As you can see from the screenshot i have a german paypal account. And if you search the documentation you can find this:
https://developer.paypal.com/docs/classic/express-checkout/integration-guide/ECRecurringPayments/
Recurring payments cannot be created for buyers in Germany or China. In this case, you can use reference transactions as an alternate solution.
Im not 100% sure but i think this is the reason why i cant create a subscription button
I have a simple Paypal payment button:
on production of my e-commerce website. It works. Many customers have already bought items with it.
But now I'd like to see exactly the payment workflow from a buyer's point of view, from the start, until payment successful + IPN mail + auto-redirect to payment-success page, etc.
Paypal sandboxing seems incredibly complex, one has to create a Developer account, then 2 sandbox accounts, a facilitator (?), a buyer one, etc.
It also seems that Paypal duplicates the real content, into a virtual sandbox button, etc. This is really complex.
All I want is to try my already-working production PayPal-button with a single sandbox buyer account. How to do that?
Is there a way to test a production Paypal button with a sandbox account (with, say, 10000€), and to proceed to the payment like would do a real customer?
... instead of having to create 3 accounts (Developer + Buyer SandBox account + Seller SandBox account)
PS: I've read many docs about sandboxing in Paypal docs, but they have very old docs (deprecated), some old docs, some new docs, some very new docs, + some of them in French with different content to English version, etc. I'm totally lost!
Actually you can test payment buttons I'm testing one of those right now.
At first it seems more complex that it needs to be, but all you need to know is that the sandbox system is a different enviroment, so the only way to test a sandbox payment button is a sanbox account.
Go to your developer dashboard, create 2 accounts, 1 for the seller (pick merchant account when creating this one), 1 for the buyer.
Log in to sandbox.paypal.com with the seller, create the button as you already did, set the ipn and all you need. Place the button in your site, now test your new button and when paying log in with the buyer (sandbox account) you previously created.
There's no way to test environment for paypal buttons. I sent a few messages to them asking the same thing. The only way to test that is get int touch with them through your account and tell your test user, then they won't charge you.
Here's a translation I received a few weeks ago:
In this case, the Sandbox environment does not allow payment on PayPal
buttons because there is no sandbox system for buttons, only for email
integration or PayPal account API.
In this case we recommend that we send a URL of the buttons or even
your site already with the buttons registered.
That way any analyst can do the actual payment test for you.
Our test balance is only R $ 50,00 reais, so the buttons can not
exceed this value with product price and freight.
Is this the real behavior of Paypal. I am using the Paypal REST api (payment api's), and it is working fine and customers can use it. The only problem is when a new customer (one that has not visited paypal.com once) tries to buy our product, paypal seems to require him to create an account.
Here's the procedure:
First time to visit paypal.com (meaning no cookies / not cached or anything).
Customer Buy Product (Our website creates the payment transaction then redirects him to paypal.com)
Customer click Pay with my credit or debit card (He does not want to create a paypal account).
The country set is Philippines (I think paypal detects this so it is initially set to where I am) and I can proceed paying with my credit card
I tried changing the country to somewhere else
Here's comes the problem, on some countries, I am shown a different form, a form for creating a new account in Paypal.
Hope you understand what I am saying. Thanks.
It’s important to remember that guest checkout is not guaranteed for every transaction. PayPal runs a risk check to determine eligibility for guest checkout. There will be times when guest checkout is not available. This is intended. Here are a few things to make sure guest checkout is offered as often as possible.
-Verified PayPal account
-Confirmed email address
-Guest Checkout enabled - To see this, log in, go to Profile and click 'My selling preferences', click on Update next to Website preferences - scroll down the screen and find "PayPal Account Optional" section - you can enable/disable PayPal Account optional here.
-With Express Checkout their cart must pass “SOLUTIONTYPE=Sole”
Unfortunately, there are few parameters which are still incompatible with REST API including SOLUTIONTYPE which works only in Classic API.
If all of these are met and it’s not available then our system has decided to disable the guest checkout option for risk reasons. This is not a permanent decision and it will be available in the future.
When trying to pay for products/services through paypal, I get to see two possible options. One of them allows you to pay through your paypal account or debit/credit card while the other option only allows to pay through your paypal or register a new account.
I have trie to go over all the information about business accounts on paypal, but did not find any related information.
I am attaching screenshots of both paymnet sites.
Any guidance is vey much appreciated.
There is a feature called Account optional in PayPal.This is a merchant/seller setting and no buyer has control over it.
To turn the feature on or off, simply log in to PayPal, go to Profile, click ‘Website Payment Preferences’ under the Selling Preferences column and tick the yes/no box under PayPal Account Optional.
If this feature is turned On, then you will get to see Pay with Credit/Debit Card,
if not you will see Create a PayPal account.
P.S But, sometimes, even if this feature is on, PayPal will still display "Create a PayPal account".
This is due to some restrictions (buyers country,IP, how many times guest checkout is used etc). Its a complex limitation.
Im integrating an MVC4 website with Paypal and all has gone quite smoothly until now. However, when I click through, the buyer does not get the option to complete the purchase as a guest.
I'm using the Paypal HTML payments standard method and searched around and this page and Paypal itself said to make sure
'Account optional' was off in my profile. I'm in my sandbox profile now, but under 'website payment preferences' there is no such option. I just have:
Auto return for website payments
Payment data transfor
Encrypted website payments
Contact telephone no
Express checkout settings (just for german payment methods!)
Does anyone know where this setting is now?
The person I'm building the site does not want users to have to have a paypal account, so guest checkout functionality is required.
Unfortunately the Paypal website doesn't really help - searches for guest checkout turn up little.
Any help really appreciated.
Thanks
I'm having the same problem, I guess it might be related to your location or your customers location (Outside the US).
I have called PayPal Support and after about an hour of discussion they said something like that.
I hope that this is not the right answer (I hope there is some sort of setting we can do to change that, and we are just missing it).
also check that link it might help:
PayPal Standard not giving option for Check out as Guest
Make sure that the receiving account has verified status (eg, that you've linked it to a bank account).
Only verified accounts are eligible for guest checkout.
Another common pitfall is that you might have made a typo on the email address of the receiver.
Make sure it's the exact same one that's used to log into the PP account (or at least that it's associated, and confirmed to the account)
This topic forum is the best place I've found for a checklist of requirements to receive guest payments on paypal:
https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/How-to-use-PayPal-Archive/buy-now-button-requires-paypal-login-or-account/m-p/15587