PayPal Standard takes customers from your site to PayPal’s secure site to finish paying for their order.
Go to paypal.com, and sign up for a PayPal Business account or convert an existing Personal account to Business. It’s free.
To set up PayPal Standard:
1/ Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Payments.
Note: ‘Payments’ formerly called ‘Checkout’ prior to WooCommerce 3.4.
2/Use the toggle under Enabled to select PayPal.
3/ Select Set up. You are taken to the PayPal Standard settings.
4/ Enter your email address in the PayPal Email field, which is the most important thing to configure before taking payments. Must match the same email address on your PayPal Business account.
Under Advanced Options, complete fields as needed.
5/ Tick the box for Enable PayPal Sandbox if you wish to test the checkout process during your store’s development. With sandbox enabled, no payment/money is taken. To use Sandbox mode, you need a separate sandbox account via PayPal Sandbox.
6/ Debug log may also be turned on, which can be useful during development. You may need to first create a wc-logs folder and set permissions to make it writable. These logs are available at WooCommerce > System Status > Logs and then select the PayPal log from the dropdown.
7/ Tick the box for Enable IPN Email Notifications (optional). Instant Payment Notifications (IPN) are sent from PayPal when you receive a payment, issue a refund or a chargeback or cancellation.
8/ Enter an email address for Receiver Mail if this address is different than the PayPal email address you entered above in step 4.
9/ PayPal Identity Token (optional). Only required if you signed up for the Data Transfer option on your PayPal account; can be used to verify payments if you have IPN issues.
10/ Enter an Invoice Prefix (useful if you have multiple stores). WC is default to denote WooCommerce transactions.
11/ There are two shipping options:
Note: When selecting the option to send Shipping details, PayPal verifies passed addresses and can reject the customer if they don’t fully recognize the address. If “Shipping Details” checkbox is not checked – PayPal Seller protection might not be valid, since PayPal requires buyer’s Shipping Address for Seller Protection.
12/ Payment Action lets you choose to Capture funds immediately or only Authorize*.
*Once an ‘authorize only’ order has been changed to Processing or Completed, funds are automatically captured as long as you have entered your PayPal API Credentials (as below) under WooCommerce > Settings > Payments > PayPal. It is no longer a manual process as of WooCommerce 3.0.
13/ Page Style (optional) allows you to select the name of a custom page from your PayPal account.
14/ Image URL (optional) gives the option to specify a 150×50 image to display on PayPal checkout pages.
There are three fields to paste API information into:
Most of the configuration is handled from WooCommerce, but there are a few items to set up at PayPal.
It’s necessary for WooCommerce to set up your PayPal IPN URL.
PayPal Instant Payment Notifications (PayPal IPN) tells your store that payment has been successful (or not). To learn more about how to set this up on PayPal, see: How to Activate IPN in your PayPal Account.
example.com with your own URL:https://example.com/?wc-api=WC_Gateway_Paypal
You can set up auto-return in your PayPal account, which will take customers to a receipt page.
example.com with your own URL:https://example.com/checkout/order-received/Regardless of this setting, it redirects dynamically to the correct receipt page.?utm_nooverride=1 to the end of your URL to ensure that transactions (i.e., conversions) are credited to the original traffic source, rather than PayPal.
Payment is made offsite on the PayPal website and not your checkout. Adding an SSL certificate is optional but definitely recommended. SSL is a ranking factor in search results; it also keeps any information transmitted to and from your site secure, and customers expect it. For free and low-cost options, see: SSL and HTTPS.
It’s free to download both WooCommerce and the PayPal Powered by Braintree payment gateway.
PayPal charges you transaction fees depending on the account you qualify for and the number/volume of sales you make. More at: Which Payment Option is Right for Me?
WooCommerce does not charge you a fee.
If the customer abandons the order in PayPal (and not your WooCommerce store), the order shows as Pending (unpaid). No action is necessary.
When the hold stock time is reached, the order will be automatically canceled.
The PayPal gateway passes individual line items to PayPal (product name, price and quantity) unless:
This is to prevent rounding errors and to ensure correct totals are charged. When line items are not sent, the items are grouped and named ‘Order #x’.
WooCommerce 2.6+ sends shipping costs as a ‘real’ shipping line item via PayPals API. If your PayPal account has shipping rules setup within it, these will take over and remove the cost WooCommerce sends across.
To resolve you must remove all shipping rules setup on the PayPal account side or disable them using this method:https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/How-to-use-PayPal-Archive/Turning-off-shipping-calculator/td-p/40601
In this case, the PayPal IPN is failing. Check your server and see the Debugging IPN issues section below.
If you see the following error message after hitting the purchase button, the email address you entered in PayPal settings is incorrect:
WooCommerce uses an “invoice” system. There is a setting that “blocks duplicate invoices.” With two websites using invoices, it is inevitable that there will be duplicate invoice numbers. By de-selecting that setting in PayPal, the invoices have no issue. Please check that the Invoice Prefix in your WooCommerce PayPal settings is different for each site.
Alternatively, to disable duplicate invoice checking, log into your PayPal account and go to Profile > Profile and Settings > My Selling Preferences > Block Payments (or) Payment Receiving Preferences and set Block accidental payments to“No.”
There is an option that allows customers to check out without creating an account, but it does first need enabled in your PayPal account.
Once logged in select the gear icon in the top right to get to the My Profile page. Then head to the Products & Services section and select Website Preferences. Once there toggle on the PayPal Account Optional option. To learn more, see: PayPal’s Website.
Yes, if you use the Shipping address. No, if you use your Billing address (default). The PayPal API does not recognize more than one address.
PayPal has a page dedicated to common questions about Venmo signup, payments, refunds, disputes and opting out at Venmo and my PayPal account FAQ.
The “Seller only accepts payments from unencrypted payments” message is from PayPal.
This error displays when your PayPal Account Profile is set to only accept payments from “encrypted” buttons but your item button code is “not” encrypted. This interrupts the payment process and displays the error message.
To turn off this option:
WooCommerce order numbers may not be unique if you’re running multiple stores or use your PayPal account for other things.
To avoid this issue, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Checkout > PayPal and set a unique ‘prefix’ for your store, e.g., MYSTORE-
To use PayPal Standard with WooCommerce Subscriptions:
