WP PayPal enables PayPal checkout on your WordPress site. You can easily create various types of buttons to accept PayPal payments from your users.
PayPal Plugin Summary
WordPress PayPal Plugin Installation
- Login to your WordPress admin dashboard
- Go to Plugins->Add New
- Enter WP PayPal in the search box
- Once you find the plugin hit the install button
Option 2
- Download the zip version of the plugin
- Go to Plugins->Add New and switch to the Upload tab
- Select the zip file on your computer
- Upload and install it
Option 3
- Download the zip file and extract it
- Connect to your website via FTP (you can use a software like Filezilla to transfer files to your server) and browse to the “/wp-content/plugins” folder
- Select the folder containing the plugin files on your computer and upload it
- Once all the files have been uploaded to your web server you can activate the plugin from the Plugins menu (WordPress admin dashboard)
WordPress PayPal Plugin Usage
In order to create a button you need insert a shortcode and specify the type in the button parameter.
Buy Now
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="1.00"]
Add to Cart
[wp_paypal button="cart" name="My product" amount="1.00"]
Donation
[wp_paypal button="donate" name="My product"]
Subscription
[wp_paypal button="subscribe" name="My product" amount="1.00" recurrence="1" period="M" src="1"]
PayPal Button Demo
PayPal Button Customizations
Button Image
“button_image” parameter can be added to the shortcode to show your own button image instead of the default PayPal button. For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" button_image="http://example.com/images/buy.png"]
Shipping
“shipping” parameter can be added to the shortcode to charge shipping for an item. For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" shipping="1.75"]
Shipping2
“shipping2” parameter can be added to the shortcode to charge shipping for each additional unit of an item. For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" shipping="1.75" shipping2="0.75"]
This means, If a user orders:
My Product (Quantity 1) – total shipping = $1.75
My Product (Quantity 2) – total shipping = $1.75 + $0.75
My Product (Quantity 3) – total shipping = $1.75 + $0.75 + $0.75
And so on.
This feature is also very useful if you want to offer shipping at a discounted rate for each additional item.
Tax/GST
“tax” parameter can be added to the shortcode to charge GST for an item. For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" tax="2.15"]
Success Page
“return” parameter can be added to the shortcode to redirect the user to a specific page on your site after the payment. For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" return="http://example.com/thank-you"]
Cancellation Page
“cancel_return” parameter can be added to the shortcode to redirect the user to a specific page on your site if they cancel checkout before completing the payment. For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" cancel_return="http://example.com/payment-canceled"]
Show/Hide Shipping Address
“no_shipping” parameter can be added to the shortcode to control whether or not to prompt buyers for a shipping address. Allowable values are,
- 0 – Prompt for a shipping address but do not require one (This option is set by default)
- 1 – Do not prompt for a shipping address
- 2 – Prompt for a shipping address and require one
For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" no_shipping="1"]
Allow Buyers to Specify the Quantity
“undefined_quantity” parameter can be added to the shortcode to allow buyers to specify the quantity of the item on the Paypal payment page. This parameter is only used with a Buy Now button. For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" undefined_quantity="1"]
Open PayPal Button in a New Window/Tab
“target” parameter can be added to the shortcode to open a PayPal button in a new window or tab. For example:
[wp_paypal button="buynow" name="My product" amount="4.99" target="_blank"]
Manage PayPal Orders
When you receive a new order it will appear in the Orders menu. You can then do the following to finalize it:
1) Send a purchase confirmation email to the customer (include download links if applicable)
2) Ship the goods
I am saving money to donate to Programs like the one that saved my Nephew a few months ago. I want to thank you for this plugin that allows me to do this and thank you on the behalf of Little Trenton Jocob as well whos life they saved.
Thank you so much for this awesome plugin. Is it possible to add a trial period to my PayPal subscription button?
@John, It’s possible. Please check the Creating a subscription payment button link for details.
hi, sorry total noob here. where do i put the donate button code?
thanks!
@nona, It’s just an additional feature like the download button. You copy and paste the shortcode into a post/page to create a PayPal donate button.
I recently uploaded WPpaypal and it failed to load the settings, and I cannot set the parameters of Paypal. WHat do I do?
@Bruce, This issue doesn’t occur on my development site. So I’m not sure what is actually causing it. If you are interested I can login to your site and investigate it.
I would like to put a PayPal “donate” button on our homepage, and I’ve installed/configured the plug-in. But like Nona (above), I can’t figure out where to put the “donate” shortcode to generate a button, and then tell it how to go to a specific module on the homepage. Is any other documentation available? The instructions on this page assume a level of knowledge that I don’t (yet) have. Thanks in advance!
@Eric, By homepage do you mean your theme template file? You can embed it anywhere in the content area of a post/page. But if it’s a PHP file you will need to tell WordPress to filter the shortcode:
https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/do_shortcode/
Can you add variations to a product ?
@Michael, Unfortunately It’s not possible at the moment.
Hi. Nice plugin, but how do customers access product(s) added to the cart?
@Jamal, What do you mean by accessing products in the cart?
i meant when you click on “add to cart button” how do you access the cart to see products added to cart… Never mind, i just did a test and found out how it work…
Does it use session to add and keep your products in paypal cart? Thanks.
@Jamal, It’s controlled by PayPal. The plugin doesn’t do anything with the cart.
Regarding paying with credit card, You do get this option on the payment page. PayPal just minimises it and shows the PayPal option by default.
Another thing is: some paypal plugins allow people to pay with their card and not just with paypal, but this doesn’t have that function, does it?
Great plugin! Is there a way to select an amount for someone to pay for, ie, if the price is £5, I would like to give them the option of paying for 1, 2, 3 or 4 of them. And can I set it to open the Paypal page in a new window, rather than the same one?
@Jason, Unfortunately price variation option is still not available in the plugin.
Hello. I am trying to upload WP Paypal buttons to my WP site, but the directions do not match what I am seeing on the WP page. There is no Upload button for Plugins. There is nothing on the Admin screen that seems to correspond to these directions.
Please advise.
@Rexx, Do you have admin capability? I believe only an account with admin role can upload plugins/themes.
Hi
Is there any way to change the currency unit from $ to £?
Thanks
@Daniel, You can specify the currency code in the settings. You can also override it in a particular shortcode.
@admin,
How to override the currency using the shortcode? Do you have a sample?
Thanks in advance.
@miong, What type of button are you using?
I am using the “buynow” button. Current code is [wp_paypal button=”buynow” name=”Session” amount=”70.00″ undefined_quantity=”1″ ]
The settings is set to a currency of GBP, but the currency remains as USD inPaypal. Therefore how I can override it in the shortcode?
@Jermine, Please provide a link to your Buy Now button page so I can check the code.
Hi, your plugin is very nice!
I only don’t uderstand how is possible to use the function “Manage PayPal Orders” for check the people that pay your product 🙁 Can you give me more specifications?
Thank you!
@Robert, Are you referring to a function in the plugin code or the orders menu in the settings? You just use shorcode to create button. When someone pays for a product, PayPal sends notification to your site and it appears in the Orders menu.
So how does this work, I create a page on the site, and paste the buy nnow button, add to cart, and cancel and return code on the page? So for product variations, I’d need to create each indevidual page?
@Mellissa, That’s how it works. You don’t have to create a new page for each shortcode. You can have multiple shortcodes on the same page.
Is this simply a button creation plugin or can you transact on your website page.
I would like to have a subscription checkout on my own website without sending them to the Paypal website, does this plugin do that?
@Mike, that’s not possible unfortunately. It uses the PayPal standard API which sends the user to the PayPal site for the payment.
Hi
I have bought a site with this plugin to run paypal
www.premiumlogoshop.comhowever when you click on the buy it now button, I am taken to the wrong paypal account and displaying the wrong price. How would i edit this to correct the problem?Thanks
@Daniel, Have you updated your email address in the settings (WP PayPal > Settings)?
The readme shows how you can give parameters to a shortcode. I have several (almost identical) pages that will have 4 buttons each, but the only difference (page to page) will be price on the buttons. Is there a way to populate the price on those buttons from POST parameters from a form?
Thanks.
@Daniel, Unfortunately that’s not possible at the moment.
Is there a way to code the button to open the payment window in a new tab? Thanks!
@Brianna, I have just released an update to support this feature. You can now add
target="_blank"in the shortcode to open a PayPal button in a new tab.Hi im testing this out with sandbox but the orders arent showing up. Why is this?
@Stephen, Do you have the debug option enabled in the plugin settings? It would provide more information as to whether or not the plugin received a payment notification from PayPal.
sandbox test not working. error mg: “Please check your email address and password and try again”
Do i need to set up anything to work/test in sandbox?
PS: I am using an existing paypal account to test as a site user
@ISS, Which shortcode are you using? There is a good chance it’s broken. You need to copy and paste it as plain text to make sure there is no formatted character in it. Please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a closer look.
i am using the subscription code – something like this
[wp_paypal button="subscribe" name="test product" amount="3.50" recurrence="3" period="M" src="1"]do you have an email i can send the page link too
@ISS, You can use the contact form to get in touch.
Thanks i work it out.
2) My new question is that i dont see the order in the “order page” how long before the completed order appears in the wordpress order page?
2) Also it appears the “return” and “cancel” attributes cannot be used with the button=”subscribe” – i get the following error “The link you have used to enter the PayPal system is invalid. Please review the link and try again.” when i used the return attribute
@ISS, Do you have the debug option enabled? It will tell you whether or not the plugin received a payment notification from PayPal.
Yes i do sent it to your contact email
Thx
Awaiting you response. In the mean time here is some error mgs in the debug log that stands out:
– FAILURE :Received invalid response from PayPal
– FAILURE :Error response: cURL error 35: error:14077410:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:sslv3 alert handshake failure
Pls help. the full log has been send to your contact email
@ISS, I already replied to your email. As of June 30, PayPal has updated its services to require TLS 1.2 for all HTTPS connections. PayPal also requires HTTP/1.1 for all connections. Please make sure that your web server supports it so the plugin can connect to the PayPal server and verify the IPN.
Oh something most have gone wrong …. i did not get your email.
Anyway thanks for the latest info, i will speak to my server ppl about the tls issue
If someone wants to cancel a subscription – what is the process? If someone cancels a renewal on paypal do thy just get deleted from the orders page?
@David, the plugin doesn’t automatically do anything if a subscription is cancelled or renewed.
Please help the button_image and target doesnt work.
My code looks like this:
[wp_paypal button="donate" name="SPORTS Donate" target="_blank" button_image="http:example.com/image.jpg"]@Kurt, Please provide a link to the page in question so I can take a look. Did you copy and paste the shortcode as plain text in the visual editor? It might be broken if there are hidden formatted characters in it.
Hi,
I have installed the following add-ons: “Affiliates Manager Paid Membership Pro Integration” and “Affiliates Manager Simple Membership Integration”. Are they compatible with WP PayPal subscription button for subscriptions and recurring payments? Who of them will work exactly? Should I put extra code in the WP PayPal shortcode?
@Petya, Unfortunately WP PayPal doesn’t have integration with Affiliates Manager at the moment.
Thank you for the information!
Such integration would facilitate the work of webmasters. 🙂
I’ll follow your blog with pleasure.
Best Regards