Troubleshooting PayPal

There are a few common issues you may encounter when setting up PayPal

Here's a quick checklist to get you started, and should this not resolve your issue, continue through this article to find more specific guides:

* Check your credentials
Check that your account email address and your API credentials are the same on Zoey as they are in PayPal

* Check you are using the correct API Authentication Methods
API Signatures and API Certificates are not interchangeable. Whichever one your PayPal account provided has to be the one you use in Zoey!

* Check you are using the correct country for your Account
When you are setting up your payment methods, you will need to select the country your PayPal account was set up in. Selecting the wrong country, such as leaving it as the default "United States" when your account was set up for New Zealand, will cause issues with your credentials being accepted.

* PayPal Standard is no longer supported
We don't recommend using "PayPal Standard", but rather "PayPal Express Checkout"- a newer version of the standard checkout which is far more reliable. Express Checkout is available on every PayPal account, so there's no reason not to take advantage of these additional features and securities!

Clicking "Checkout with PayPal" Takes Me Back to the Shopping Cart Page

Quick answer: Check your PayPal Credentials in Zoey

Entering your PayPal API credentials correctly is sometimes harder than it sounds. Often copy/pasting from PayPal brings in extra spaces or missing characters. Be sure that you have accurately entered the credentials, save and try again.

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To be absolutely sure, paste the credentials into a notepad or text file on your computer, then copy/paste from there into your Zoey Admin.

Seeing an Error When Completing Checkout: Duplicate Invoice

Quick answer: Allow multiple payments per invoice.

It may sound strange, but you should allow multiple payments per invoice ID. This is for a few reasons, most notably, because sometimes people abandon PayPal payment and Zoey will just re-assign invoice IDs to the next customer. If you migrated to Zoey or have a second store attached to this PayPal account, invoice numbers may overlap between the two, also causing this issue.

By default your PayPal "Payment Receiving Preferences" will be set to not allow multiple payments. You will need to change this:

  • Go to Account Settings
  • Go to My Selling Tools
  • Click Update next to Block Payments
  • Change Block Accidental Payments to "NO"

Seeing an Error When Completing Checkout: Invalid Credentials

Quick answer: Check your PayPal Credentials in Zoey

Entering your PayPal API credentials correctly is sometimes harder than it sounds. Often copy/pasting from PayPal brings in extra spaces or missing characters. Be sure that you have accurately entered the credentials, save and try again.

Be sure you are also using the correct email for your account! This might not be the same one you log on to your store with, it will be the one you log on to PayPal with for this account.

Seeing an Error When Completing Checkout: 10501 Invalid Configuration

Quick answer: Complete the Billing Agreement for Payments Pro

This transaction cannot be processed due to an invalid merchant configuration.

Occurs when the billing agreement is disabled or inactive.

This setting would be in your PayPal account. Depending on your version of the PayPal merchant center, this should be somewhere in the PayPal Payments Pro or Website Payments Pro settings. Enable Billing agreements.

Payments Are Not Updating Between Zoey and Paypal

Quick answer: Update your PayPal Account's IPN (Instant Payment Notification)

You should be able to resolve this issue by logging into your PayPal account. Enable the "IPN Notification" setting. You can use the following URL for Paypal IPN: http:// INSERT YOUR URL HERE/index.php/paypal/ipn/.

For the latest information on where to find these settings, please see PayPal's documentation: Setting Up IPN Notifications on PayPal

Shipping is charged twice

This issue happens when you have set "Transfer Cart Line Items" to "yes" within your PayPal settings on Zoey's end. Simply set this to "No".

Additionally, double check whether you have shipping set up in the Shipping / Postage Calculator within your PayPal account:
www.paypal.com > Profile > Postage (or Shipping) Calculator. You may want to disable it.

IPN is failing

In the Zoey Admin under Settings > Payment Methods > PayPal, make sure you have the correct email address entered that matches the admin email address for your PayPal account. This will clear up any/all IPN issues.