PayPal is one of the most popular payment method used for online shopping around the world. If your online store doesn’t support PayPal, then you may be missing out a huge amounts of your customers who prefer paying through this popular method. WooCommerce comes with built in PayPal functionality which you can enable and disable with a click of a button. But this is not enough if you want to accept payments via PayPal. You must integrate your PayPal account with your  WooCommerce store.

Requirements

Before start this you’ll need the following:

• Access to WordPress admin panel of your store
• PayPal standard account also known as business account

First sign up to create a PayPal account.

Once sign up will complete, PayPal will ask you if you want to create a Personal Account or a Business Account.

A Personal Account is one which can be used to make purchase online. A Business Account is used to accept payments through PayPal on your WooCommerce online store.

Setup and Configuration of PayPal within WooCommerce

WooCommerce has built in PayPal into the payment methods option. To set up:

→ Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Payments.

In WooCommerce 3.4 or higher version you will get Checkout instead of Payments.

→ Click the Enable toggle for PayPal and

→ Then click the Set up button or on the name PayPal. You will be taken to Paypal Standard settings.

→ Now enter your email address in the PayPal email field. Use the same email that you have used to create PayPal business account.

Advanced Options

When you explore the advanced options you will get some more fields like the above screenshot. Complete those fields as needed.

→ The PayPal Sandbox is an interesting tool to test your online store during the development stage. Selecting this lets you test the payment process without actually taking money. Put a Tick on the box for Enable PayPal Sandbox if you wish to test the checkout process during your store’s development.

→ You may also turn on the Debug log. It keeps a log of all PayPal events. This is also useful for testing during the online store development phase. You can check the logs at WooCommerce > System Status > Logs and then select the PayPal log from the drop down.

→ You can optionally put a tick mark on the box for Enable IPN Email Notifications. It is a notification that indicates a refund, charge back or a cancellation.

→ Now enter an email address for Receiver Mail if this address is different than the PayPal email address you entered above. Receiver email will receive all notification.

→ PayPal Identity Token (Optional) is used to verify payments without the need for IPN. It’s only needed if you sign up for the Data Transfer option at PayPal account.

→ Now enter an Invoice Prefix that lets you identify the store within the invoice number. This is helpful if you’ve connected your PayPal account to multiple online stores.

→ In Shipping details there are two shipping options.

1. Put tick on Send Shipping details will let PayPal create shipping labels for you instead of billing the customer.
2. The Address Override option prevents the address from any change. It can cause errors, so we recommend to keep it disable.

→ Payment Action lets you capture the funds immediately or authorize the payment to be made once the status of the order is changed to Processing or Complete. Authorize requires PayPal API Credentials.

→ Page Style (optional) lets you enter the name of the PayPal page style, you want to use for your classic checkout page. You can see the styles in your PayPal account.

→ Image URL (optional) lets you enter the URL for a 150 x 150 image that will display on your checkout page. If you want to display your logo this will be best.

API Credentials

The API Credentials will have to set up in order to process refunds. There are three fields in API Credentials: API Username, Password and Signature.

To get Live API information,

• Log in to your PayPal Business account
• Go to My Selling Tools > API Access.
• Next, select the NVP/SOAP API integration (Classic) > View API Signature.
• Here you can copy your API Username, API Password and API Signature from there.

Configuring the PayPal dashboard

WooCommerce handle most of the configuration of PayPal. There are a few items to set up at PayPal account.

PayPal IPN URL

It is necessary to set up your PayPal IPN URL in WooCommerce.  You can learn more on how to set this up on PayPal from here.

In your PayPal Business account,

→ Go to Profile > Profile and settings > My selling tools.

→ Click on Instant payment notifications to set your URL.

Use the following replacing example.com with your own URL:

http://example.com/?wc-api=WC_Gateway_Paypal

Auto-Return

You can set up the auto-return in your PayPal account, which will take customers to a receipt page. As an example, use the following URL and replace example.com with your own URL:

example.com/checkout/order-received/

Add ?utm_nooverride=1 at the end of your URL to ensure that transactions (i.e., conversions) are credited to the original traffic source, rather than PayPal.

WooCommerce and PayPal make a great combination for any eCommerce website and it’s not difficult too to connect your PayPal account to your WooCommerce store. It’s a good idea to use PayPal’s sandbox feature when setting up PayPal to receive payments to your store.

Related Article: PayPal Standard