PayPal website payments not working

Your site hands the buyer to PayPal in a window, and PayPal hands the result back. The keys your site uses must belong to the same environment as the account that receives the money, test or live. The order's currency must be one that account accepts. When the keys point at the wrong environment, the window opens and then refuses the account. When the currency is not accepted, the order fails inside PayPal. The third stop is the return, where an approved order can still be left unrecorded on your side.

• Open the browser console at the click and note any error from PayPal's address or from your own script.
• Check that the keys in your store are the live pair for the account that receives payments, not the test pair.
• Compare the order's currency with the currencies that account accepts for buyers in that country.
• After a test approval, check the order list in your admin, not only the thank you page.

The buyer meets PayPal at three stops, and each leaves its own trace. At the button, the click either opens a PayPal window or does nothing at all. In the window, PayPal accepts the buyer or refuses them, often with a short message about the account, the currency or the country. After approval, the buyer is sent back to your site, where the order should be recorded as paid. The other two only show up after the buyer gets past the button.

PayPal keeps a test environment and a live environment, each with its own keys, and a page built with one set of keys cannot take money into an account in the other. A key pair from the wrong environment makes the window open and then refuse the account, which looks to the buyer like PayPal rejecting them. The currency works the same way. An order in a currency the receiving account does not accept fails inside the window, after the buyer has already entered details. Check the keys and the order currency before any other change.

Ask the buyer which currency the PayPal window showed, and compare it with the currency your order uses. Write down the buyer's country and device too, so a refusal from one place can be told apart from one that happens everywhere. Do not tell the buyer to try another browser until you know which of those causes applies. The keys and the currency are two separate checks, so run both before you decide.

The most painful stop comes last. The buyer approves the payment in PayPal and is sent back to your site, then sees an error or a page saying the order failed. Your server may have received the approval without marking the order as paid, or it may never have finished the step that completes the payment. Check the order list in your admin after a test, not only the thank you page, because a thank you page can appear while the order record is missing.

A simulated visitor adds the item, goes to checkout and presses the PayPal button. The run records a screenshot at the click, whether a PayPal window opened, the address of that window, and any script error or blocked request from the button. The run cannot go through PayPal's own login or payment, so it stops at PayPal's window and cannot show you the return trip.

That limit matters for this topic. A fix to the keys or the return handler can only be confirmed by an approval on your side, in a PayPal sandbox or with a small order you place yourself. Use the run to confirm the button and the window, then check the return by hand, and repeat the run after each change.

PayPal keys get replaced, a store changes its currency, or a second payment plugin adds another PayPal button, and the window can start refusing buyers again. Run the same visitor after each of those changes, from the button to the sign-in window. Check the order list after one approved test, because the window can open again while the return still fails.