Paid Member Subscriptions Recurring Payments for PayPal Standard GPL v1.2.8

Paid Member Subscriptions Recurring Payments for PayPal Standard GPL Overview

Once the plugin is activated, navigate to Paid Member Subscriptions → Settings → Payments where you’ll find PayPal Standard as the Active Payment Gateway.

Make sure to check the payment gateways you want to use on your site. You can also set up a default payment gateway for accepting member payments.

Paid Member Subscriptions Payments Settings that we can set up:

• Test Mode – By checking this option you will be able to use Paid Member Subscriptions with Test Accounts from your payment processors.
• Currency – Select your currency. Please note that some payment gateways can have currency restrictions
• Currency Position – Select whether the currency symbol should appear before the price or after the price.
• Price Display Format – You can select how prices should be displayed (with or without decimals).
• Active Payment Gateways – Select which Payment Gateways are active on your domain.
• Default Payment Gateway – Select which Payment Gateway is selected by default inside the Registration form
• Allow Subscription Downgrades – By checking this option, you are allowing members to downgrade their subscription plan to a lower one from the same tier.
• Allow Subscription Change – By checking this option, you are allowing members to change their subscription to one from another tier.

One time payment credentials
Go to Paid Member Subscriptions → Settings → Payment Gateways → PayPal Standard to enter the Email Address that is connected to your PayPal Business account.

Recurring Payments credentials
Go to Paid Member Subscriptions → Settings → Payment Gateways → PayPal to enter the Email Address that is connected to your PayPal Business account.

Below you’ll need to enter your PayPal API credentials for PayPal Standard Recurring Payments. These are required in order to use any of PayPal Standard Recurring Payments features.

For more information on how to obtain your PayPal Live API Credentials see this guide.

Setting up Instant Payment Notifications (IPN)
PayPal Standard including the Recurring Payments require that you enable IPN Notifications inside your PayPal Business Account. If you are using a Merchant Sandbox Account you will need to login inside the PayPal Sandbox Account to set up the IPN.

For this log into your PayPal Business Account → hover over your Account Name and go to Account Settings → Business Profile → Notifications → Instant payment notifications → Click on the Update link.

Inside Instant Payment Notification (IPN) → Turn On IPN and set your listener’s URL.

Processing a payment with PayPal Standard
If everything is set up correctly, including the PayPal API Credentials and the IPN, we can process our first PayPal Standard payment on our website.

We will test the payments by using Paid Member Subscriptions in Test Mode. Go to Paid Member Subscriptions → Settings → Payments → Check “Test Mode”. By checking this option you will be able to use Paid Member Subscriptions with test accounts from your payment processors.

One time payment
Inside our Registration form, we display 3 Subscription Plans: Free, Silver, and Gold, and the Renewal option is set to “Customer opts in for automatic renewal”.

After registration, the user will need to login inside his PayPal Account.

After login, the user will need to confirm the payment by clicking on the “Pay Now” button.

By clicking on the “Pay Now” button we complete the purchase.

This is how the payment looks like in Paid Member Subscriptions -> Payments.

Recurring payment
To make a recurring payment when the Renewal option is set to “Customer opts in for automatic renewal” the user will need to check the “Automatically renew subscription” checkbox.

After registration the user will need to login inside his PayPal Account.

After login the user will need to confirm the payment by clicking on the “Agree & Pay” button.

Sign-up Fee Payment
To use the “Sign-up Fee” Feature we need to go to Paid Member Subscriptions → Subscription Plans → Edit your Subscription Plan and to setup the amount for the Sign-up Fee. Users will pay the Sign-Up Fee only once. The Renewal feature is set to “Customer opts in for automatic renewal”

This is how the Paid Member Subscriptions Registration Form looks like after we setup the Sign-up Fee.

This is how the payment looks like in Paid Member Subscriptions -> Payments.

Free Trial Payment
To use the “Free Trial” Feature we need to go to Paid Member Subscriptions -> Subscription Plans -> Edit your Subscription Plan and to setup the amount for the Free Trial. The Sign-up Fee applies regardless of the Free Trial. The Renewal feature is set to “Customer opts in for automatic renewal”.

If you setup the Renewal option to “Always renew automatically” the Subscription Plan will renew automatically.

Based on the example below users will receive a 1 Month Free Trial if they purchase the Silver Plan. After the expiration of the Subscription Plan users will be able to renew manually the plan from their Account.

This is how the Paid Member Subscriptions Registration Form looks like after we setup the Free Trial.

The Free Trial Subscription is activated immediately and begins with the Trial period. This is displayed in Paid Member Subscriptions -> Members.

Based on the example above, the actual payment will take place on 28/09/2023 when the Free Trial expires. The user can view these details inside his Account -> View Details.

Guest Checkout
When using the PayPal Standard gateway for payments you can allow users to checkout without an account. With this option activated, after the user is redirected to PayPal they will be able to log in or use a credit card in order to pay.

This feature needs to be enabled in your PayPal account. To activate it, go to Account Settings -> Website payments -> Website preferences and set PayPal account optional to On.

PayPal Guest checkout is available on a case-by-case basis. Very many factors – such as the country of the buyer, IP address, repeated payment attempts, and testing payments to one’s own account in the live environment – are used to determine guest eligibility. When a checkout is not guest-eligible, the buyer can still enter their card details but will also need to choose a password to create an account in the process.

Encrypted website payments
In order for the PayPal Stanard gateway to work, the Encrypted website payments setting from your PayPal account needs to be turned OFF. To find this setting go to your PayPal Business Account -> Account settings -> Website payments -> Website preferences -> Encrypted website payments

How to process a refund
Refunds are an unavoidable part of your membership business. To process a refund manually follow the steps below:

Locate the Member
Go to Paid Member Subscriptions-> Members-> and search for the member who asked you for a refund. You can enter the account email address to locate the member. After you find the member click on the “Edit Member” button.

Edit the Member
After clicking on “Edit Member” the following page will open, click on “View details”.

Then the payments page will open, from here you can modify the status of the payment from Completed in Refunded.

Process the refund on PayPal website
You will need to issue the refund from PayPal site, please follow the steps below in order to issue the refund:
⦁ Log in into your PayPal business account: https://www.paypal.com
⦁ Click the Activity tab at the top of the page.
⦁ Click All Transactions.
⦁ Search for the transaction you need to refund using Transaction ID from the above screenshot, click on it and then click Refund this payment.
⦁ For ‘Refund amount’, enter the amount you want to refund, (you may have the option to refund a partial amount of the payment) and click Continue.
⦁ Review your information to make sure you entered the correct refund amount and click Issue Refund.
Please check the following page for more information.

Change the Member Status
Now, we need to modify the member status. Please go to Paid Member Subscriptions -> Members-> search for the user to whom you refunded money-> click Edit Member.

Then click Edit on the Subscriptions.

Modify the status from Active in Expired and click “Save Subscriptions”.

PayPal Errors
A PayPal API operation can return multiple error and warning codes. You can view the full list here.

Error 10002 – Authentication/Authorization Failed
If you receive an 10002 PayPal Error when trying to process a payment with PayPal Pro or PayPal Express Checkout it means that your API Credentials are not setup correctly.

Check that the account that will receive payments was used to generate the API credentials. If you’re using PayPal’s Sandbox environment, you must generate API credentials from within the Sandbox business account rather than a Live account. You can read more about this here.

Error 11586 – DPRP is disabled for this merchant
If you receive an 11586 PayPal Error you will need to get in touch with PayPal Business Support to request this feature to be enabled for you. Mention that you’re looking to get “Direct Payment – Recurring Payments” enabled. Read more here.

PayPal Support Email Address: [email protected]

Also, make sure to tell PayPal to update PayPal Pro to the latest version on your account. Enabling Direct Payment – Recurring Payments may include additional PayPal fees – $30/Month.

PayPal Currency Error
Lets say that you setup Paid Member Subscriptions to process payments using the £ (Sterling Pound) currency. You will need to make sure that your PayPal Account uses this currency otherwise all your payments will be considered pending. This is required also for Test Merchant Accounts.

To add a currency login inside your PayPal Account -> Currencies -> Select new currency -> Select British Pound -> Add Currency.