Ecommerce: Using PayPal

The store has multiple PayPal options: PayPal Standard, PayPal Express Checkout, PayPal Advanced, PayPal Payflow Link, and PayPal Payments Pro. If you have any questions about setting up or managing your PayPal account, please contact their support team.

PayPal Standard

The most straightforward option, PayPal Standard allows you to accept payments from other PayPal accounts, as well as payment via credit card from users who don’t already have PayPal accounts.

Setting up PayPal Standard

  1. Select the Ecommerce tab from the left menu and open your store.
  2. Click on “Payment” and locate “PayPal”
  3. “Enable PayPal.” You can select this toggle to disable it as well.
  4. Under Actions, click “Edit.”
  5. Select “Change PayPal Account” and enter your email address.
  6. Click “Active” next to PayPal insights if you wish to engage this.
  7. Enter the name that you want customers to see at checkout.
  8. Select “Enable this payment method at checkout.”
  9. Next, login to your PayPal account:
    1. Visit “My Account,” “Profile” and “My selling tools.”
    2. In the settings link, locate the “Instant Payment Notification.” Click “Update.”
    3. Select “Choose IPN Settings” and “Receive IPN messages.” Enter the following in the notification URL field:

http://app.multiscreenstore.com/paypalstandard/STOREID. The Store ID must be your individual store ID, which can be found under “Dashboard” in your store menu.

  1. Enable Auto Return by visiting “Profile,” “My selling tools,” and “Website Payment Preferences. This step is optional but recommended for some circumstances*
  2. Set up encoding preferences by clicking “Open Profile,” “My selling tools,” and “PayPal button language encoding.” Use UTF-8 as the encoding and select yes next to “Do you want to use the same encoding data sent from PayPal to you.”
  3. Note: this step is only available with Premier/Business PayPal accounts. Visit “Profile,” “My selling tools,” “Shipping Calculations” and “Update.” Check the shipping method for an individual currency. Under “Edit,” pick “use the shipping fee in the transaction instead of my calculator’s settings” and Save. Repeat this for each shipping method you have set up in your PayPal account.**

*Auto Return will force customers to return to your store after completing payment. Read more about Auto Return. The most important step is to enable Instant Payment Notifications (IPN); a message will be sent from PayPal to the store regarding payment status. This allows the store to update order status appropriately and is critical for accepting payments via PayPal.

This step is not necessary, but may want to enable it for the following reasons:

  • If you are using Google Adwords/another tool and are using a tracking code. You may want to force customers back to your store to log the activity.
  • If your PayPal account is used in multiple stores, this will ensure customers return to the proper site where they began the checkout process.

Please make sure you followed all the steps described above. Otherwise, you may have issues with your PayPal orders.

** This optional step only applies to PayPal accounts that have shipping methods set up in PayPal; if you don’t have any set up, skip this step. This prevents improper shipping calculations in your store due to PayPal’s rates overriding the store’s rates.

PayPal Express Checkout

This advanced option provides a different checkout process for your store. The process is straightforward: a customer adds products to cart then clicks “Checkout with PayPal” which will redirect you to PayPal. The customer will be prompted to sign in or create an account; you will then be redirected back to the store and the store will create a profile based on your PayPal information. The customer can review their order, select their shipping method and complete the order. The store and PayPal communicate behind the scenes to charge the customer.

Setting up PayPal Express Checkout

  1. Select the Ecommerce tab from the left menu and open your store.
  2. Click on “Settings,” “Payment” and choose “PayPal Express Checkout.”
  3. Enter the relevant information (this can be obtained through your PayPal account).
  4. Save.

Generating PayPal API Signature

  1. If you have never generated an API signature, follow PayPal’s instructions.
  2. If you have, the following situations may apply:
    1. You can’t locate the generated API signature within the PayPal backend. Use the instructions above.
    2. You generated an API certificate, which will prevent you from using the signature (PayPal won’t allow both to be used at the same time). Remove the certificate and generate the signature.

Note: if you have an existing cart connected to your PayPal account that uses a certificate, this cart will not be able to process PayPal transactions. You need to switch the cart to signature.

PayPal Payflow Gateway/PayPal Payments Pro

Note: PayPal Payflow Gateway is available to merchants from the US Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK and PayPal Payments pro payment methods are available to merchants from the US.

PayPal Payflow links your store to your PayPal merchant account (this bank account allows you to accept payments via credit card and get paid directly by your bank) and a payment processor (the company that handles the credit card transactions). Read more about this option here.

If you don’t have a merchant account, PayPal Payments Pro is another option; read more here. This option allows you to collect payment through credit card right on your site. These two options have identical integration steps except:

  • PayPal Payments Pro includes a PayPal merchant account.
  • PayPal Payments Pro has restrictions on the hosted checkout template: PayPal Express Checkout and Bill Me Later methods can’t be disabled.

Set Up

  1. Sign up for the PayPal Payflow Service.
  2. Login to the manager account, click “Serice Settings,” “Hosted Checkout Pages,” “Set Up.” Next to the “Enable Secure Token” click Yes. Note: DO NOT change anything else here or on the customization page.
  3. In your store, click “Settings,” “Payment” and under the PayPal option click “PayPal Payflow Link” or “PayPal Payments Advanced.”
  4. Select the “Account Details” link to enter your credentials.
  5. Click save.
  6. Verify that the account works, login to PayPal and select “Activate Account.”
  7. In your store, turn off “Send transactions to the test server” under the payment settings.

PayPal Website Payments Pro Hosted

This solution allows you to accept credit/debit cards and PayPal payments without storing information. Read more about this option here.

Note: this option is only available for the UK, France, Australia, Hong Kong, Italy, Spain, and Japan.

Setting up PayPal Website Payments Pro Hosted

  1. Sign up for an account.
  2. Open your store, click “Settings” and “Payments.” Under the PayPal payment section, select this option and apply.
  3. Enter your PayPal account email in the settings and fill out the rest of the information.
  4. Save, enable and save again.

FAQs/Troubleshooting

Paying by credit card without a PayPal account

Your customers can pay via credit card without a PayPal account although they may be prompted to sign up for an account. Contact PayPal support for more information.

Using PayPal with just a personal account

You can use your personal account with your store. Just choose the PayPal Standard option.

Sales showing in PayPal, but not my store

You may see this discrepancy between the platforms. Ensure that your PayPal is set up properly and you’ve followed all instructions (ensure IPN messages are enabled).

If the settings are correct, open your PayPal account and click “IPN History” to check for errors or failed messages. If you see any failures, try re-sending by following these steps:

  1. In your PayPal account, click “History.”
  2. Select “IPN History.”
  3. Select “All” and click “Search.”
  4. Mark the messages to be resent and resend them.

If the issue persists, contact our support team for more information – support@wocode.com.

Customer paid, but order is showing as “Awaiting Payment”

If an order has been placed and paid for it should show in your store as “Paid” so if you are seeing “Awaiting Payment” this likely means the order is pending or the money has not yet been transferred. Check the order details in your store to view the error message and review the solutions below

Payment is Pending

Possible reasons for this error:

  • The customer has not included a confirmed shipping address. You can change your preferences in your profile so that you are manually accepting/denying these payments. (Error: Address)
  • The payment action is set to “Authorization” and funds haven’t been captured yet. You can change this by visiting your store and clicking “Settings,” “Payment” and “PayPal Express Checkout.” If you want orders to be processed immediately, set this to “Sale.” (Error: Authorization)
  • The payment was made by eCheck and it hasn’t cleared. (Error: eCheck)
  • Your account is not US based and you don’t have a withdrawal mechanism. In this case you will need to manually accept/deny this payment. (Error: Intl)
  • You don’t have your payment receiving preferences set to automatically convert a different currency. In this case you will need to manually accept/deny this payment. (Error: Multi-Currency)
  • The payment action is set to “Order” and the funds haven’t been captured yet. You can change this by visiting your store and clicking “Settings,” “Payment” and “PayPal Express Checkout.” If you want orders to be processed immediately, set this to “Sale.” (Error: Order)
  • Payment is still being reviewed for risk by PayPal. (Error: Payment Review)
  • Payment was made to an email address that isn’t registered or confirmed. (Error: Unilateral)
  • Payment was made via credit card, and you need to upgrade your PayPal account to accept this. (Error: Upgrade)
  • Your account isn’t verified. (Error: Verify)
  • Another reason; confirm this with PayPal support. (Error: Other)

The most frequent reason for all above is that a payment has been made by an eCheck that has not been cleared yet. After an eCheck is cleared (usually it takes 3-5 days), the order status will be changed to Paid automatically.

Order total and amount paid don’t match

This error likely means that the order and payment were successful and there are three reasons for this error:

  • You are using PayPal’s taxes or shipping rates and these added fees are being added to the order total causing the discrepancy. Check your PayPal account and disable any tax or shipping options as needed.
  • The currency used in the store and PayPal don’t match. Confirm you are using the same currency.
  • The PayPal email where payments are transferred doesn’t match what you listed in your store. For security reasons, the payment can be processed to the PayPal email recorded in the Store only (even if you have two emails associated with your PayPal account).Visit “Settings,” “Payment” and “Account Details” to confirm and update. If you are unsure which email receives payments, contact PayPal support.

Issue with PayPal

PayPal may experience issues on their side. When a payment is made through your store using PayPal, PayPal will send an IPN to the store with the payment details. Your store will verify this and update the order accordingly. If there is an issue with PayPal’s server (error or downtime), the store can’t verify this and will set the status to “Awaiting Payment.”