PayPal is a payment system that allows payments through credit cards, PayPal balances, or buyer credit (payments over time). When you open an online store, your store sets the email address you opened a store with as your Paypal account email. If you do not have any PayPal account yet, you can start accepting online payments right away and create a PayPal account for this email later to get access to incoming transactions. If you already have a PayPal account for this email address, then you receive payments from orders made with PayPal right away. You can also specify another PayPal email to receive payments to if you already have a different PayPal account.

To use PayPal in your store, you need a Business PayPal account. Most functions and tools provided by PayPal for business owners are only available to business accounts.

PayPal is one of the default payment systems in your online store. When you set up your online store, your store login email is preset as your PayPal account email in your store admin → Payment → PayPal section:

To enable the PayPal payment method in your online store:

That’s it. PayPal is now enabled as a payment method at your store checkout:

By placing a test order you can make sure that the PayPal payment method is properly set up in your store and check the customer experience.

Note: You cannot test PayPal using the same account as a buyer and a seller because PayPal does not allow buying from yourself.
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To place test orders through PayPal in your store:

In addition to PayPal, you can offer PayPal Credit as a financing option to your customers to encourage them to buy more or purchase more expensive products and services. With PayPal Credit, you get paid upfront while your customers can buy now and pay over time.

To enable or disable the PayPal Credit button in your store:

Here is how customers see the PayPal Credit button at checkout:

If you add the PayPal Checkout button to the cart page, the PayPal Credit button will appear on the cart page, too.

In addition to the PayPal Credit button, you can show PayPal Credit promotional banners on multiple pages in your storefront by activating PayPal Insights (PayPal Marketing Solutions) in your store admin. As a result, you will inform your customers that PayPal’s financing option is going to be available to them during the checkout process and will gain access to business insights about your PayPal shoppers.

To show PayPal Credit promo banners in your store:

When you enable the PayPal payment method, additional payment options become automatically enabled in your store (so-called smart buttons). They are local wallets and country-specific funding source, including:

PayPal dynamically picks out the most relevant payment methods for each buyer at checkout based on customer location and what is set up on their device.

Here is an example of the cart page with additional payment buttons (the actual set of these smart buttons may vary for each customer):

This gives your potential clients more choice and flexibility in how they pay, and they are more likely to convert. If you sell internationally, it also means that you don’t need to sign up with a variety of local payment providers.

Regardless of the payment method a customer chooses at checkout, PayPal will send the funds to your PayPal account, so you can manage your transactions as usual. Purchases made through these additional smart buttons will show as PayPal payments in your orders in your store admin.

You can offer your customers a fast checkout with PayPal in the cart page of your store. Your customers can skip entering their address at checkout and use shipping and payment details right from their PayPal accounts to quickly place their orders.

To add the al Checkout button to the cart page:

Now your customers will see PayPal Checkout button on the cart page and can choose if they want to go through the express checkout with PayPal or proceed with your regular checkout:

If PayPal is the only payment method you selected, your customers will see only PayPal checkout options on the cart page:

Your customers can pay you with a credit or debit card without a PayPal account login. The guest checkout option is available to the merchants with a verified Business account with PayPal.
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To offer guest checkout through PayPal:

Now, after clicking the PayPal Checkout button, customers can choose to pay by debit or credit card and PayPal will process their payments.

Here is how the guest checkout option can look like for customers:

Depending on your customer location and on their browser cookies the guest checkout may look differently. E.g. it can be offered earlier as a “Pay with Credit or Debit Card”, “Check Out as a Guest”, or "Don't have a PayPal account?” option, or it can be don’t offered at all.

If you and your customer are both located in the USA, the guest checkout option will be offered below the PayPal Checkout button in the form of credit card icons. Your customers can click on such a card icon to pay for their order with their credit or debit card.

You can also connect your store with a p

TIP: You can also connect your store with a payment gateway like Stripe or Square to add a separate Credit or debit card payment method to your store checkout, in addition to PayPal Checkout.

If you have several online stores, you can link them all to one PayPal account. Your online store takes care of proper values for each storefront and directs all sales to the PayPal account you select. All you need to do is enable the Auto return option:

Your online store will provide a URL with each payment request that overrides the Return URL field so your customers return to the site where they began the checkout process.

A Paid status in your store admin shows the funds have transferred to your account, while an Awaiting Payment status shows the funds in limbo.

Generally, PayPal orders may have Awaiting Payment status in your online store for several reasons:

You can check the specific reason from PayPal in the order details in your store admin, My Sales → Orders.

One of the often reasons for pending payments that you can see in order details is as follows:

The payment is pending because it was made to an email address that is not yet registered or confirmed.
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If you see this message in an order’s details in your store admin, first, make sure you have the right email address entered in your store admin → Payment, PayPal-Settings:

TIP: If you’re unsure why a PayPal order has an Awaiting Payment status, contact our support team for help and include your Store ID and the order number in your request.