PayPal Setup

This documentation covers everything you need to know about managing your PayPal setup.

Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) comes with a built-in PayPal integration. This gateway uses the latest PayPal checkout experience, featuring smart buttons and a “Pay with PayPal” modal that keeps customers on your site through the entire payment process.

You can use PayPal with the free core plugin without installing anything. But there are benefits to using it with an EDD Pro pass, which you learn more about in FAQs.

This guide covers connecting your PayPal account, choosing which payment methods to offer, testing with a sandbox account, setting up a fallback IPN, browser support, and fixes for the most common connection problems.

Upgrading from a different or legacy PayPal gateway? See our upgrade notes.

Already connected to PayPal gateway, but not seeing Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Fastlane? See reconnect to get the newer payment methods.

NOTE: This PayPal integration requires an SSL certificate. If you do not yet have one, see our article on how to set up SSL.

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Configure PayPal

Step 1: Connect to Your PayPal Account

You will need a PayPal account to accept payments. If you do not already have an account, you will be given the option to create one during the onboarding process.

Log in to your WordPress admin and go to Downloads » Settings » Payments » PayPal. You will see a button to connect to PayPal in your store’s current mode (either sandbox or live).

Click the Connect with PayPal button to open up a PayPal modal. This will prompt you to enter your email address and country. Proceed through the steps to either log in to your existing account or create a new one.

Important: You need to have browser popups enabled in order for the PayPal page to open in a modal. If you do not see a modal, check your browser pop-up settings, close the browser, and try again. If the pop-up window still doesn’t appear, try Chrome.

If you’re connecting in test mode, log in with your sandbox account credentials. If you don’t have a PayPal sandbox account yet, see Testing Your PayPal Setup.

After completing all of the steps, you should see a success message.

Make sure you click the button to return to your store. If you don’t click it, we can’t complete the onboarding process and you’ll have to start again.

Step 2: Check Your Account Status

Back in the EDD settings, the Connection Status area checks your connection to PayPal and reports on each capability separately:

• API: whether your PayPal account is successfully connected, and in which mode.
• Payment Status: whether you’re ready to accept payments, or whether PayPal still needs you to resolve something first.
• Advanced Card Payments: whether PayPal has approved your account for advanced card processing.
• Vaulting: whether PayPal has approved your account for saved payment methods.
• Webhook: whether the webhook is configured, and which events it’s listening for.
• Gateway Status: whether PayPal is switched on as an active gateway (see Step 4).
• Pay as you go pricing: your per-transaction fee, if one applies. This is 3% on the free version. The row only appears when a fee is in effect, and it links you to the upgrade or license activation that removes it.

Depending on your account state you’ll also see action buttons: Re-Check Payment Status, Sync Webhook, Disconnect webhooks from PayPal, and Disconnect from PayPal.

Advanced Card Payments and Vaulting are approvals PayPal grants to your account, not settings you switch on in EDD. If either shows as unavailable, the payment methods that depend on it stay disabled until PayPal approves your account.

Step 3: Configure the Available Payment Methods

Once PayPal is connected, you can choose which PayPal payment methods to offer at checkout under Payment Methods.

Payment method	What it does
PayPal	Required. The primary PayPal checkout button.
Pay Later	Shows Pay in 4 and PayPal Credit options, plus on-checkout messaging.
Credit/Debit Cards via PayPal	Lets customers pay by credit or debit card through PayPal.
Credit/Debit Cards on Checkout	Lets customers pay by credit or debit card in fields on your own checkout page. Requires PayPal’s Advanced Card Processing approval.
Venmo	Accepts Venmo payments. Available to US merchants approved for Venmo by PayPal.
Apple Pay	Accepts Apple Pay on supported devices.
Google Pay	Accepts Google Pay on supported devices.
Fastlane	Accelerated card checkout for returning buyers, with one-tap authentication. Requires PayPal’s Vaulting approval.

Customers don’t need a PayPal account to use Fastlane. It’s built for guest checkout, which is what makes it useful for buyers who’d otherwise abandon the cart rather than create an account.

A few of these depend on PayPal rather than on you. Pay Later only renders when PayPal decides the buyer is eligible, based on cart amount, country, and account state. Credit/Debit Cards on Checkout and Fastlane stay unavailable until PayPal grants your account the matching capability, which you can check in the Connection Status area from Step 2.

Which methods each customer sees also depends on their country and your PayPal account eligibility. PayPal makes that call, not Easy Digital Downloads. If a method you want isn’t available to your account, you’ll need to contact PayPal to request it.

If you connected PayPal before these methods were added, they won’t appear until you reconnect.

When you’re done, remember to save your changes.

Step 4: Enable the Payment Gateway

You’ll need to enable PayPal as an active payment gateway for it to appear on the checkout page. Go to Downloads » Settings » Payments » General and toggle PayPal under Active Gateways.

Two related settings sit on the same screen:

• Default Gateway: the gateway your checkout uses by default. Set this to PayPal if you want it preselected. If you leave it on Automatic, the first enabled gateway in Active Gateways is used.
• Payment Method Icons: which card icons appear at checkout, and whether customers can pay with their PayPal balance.

Select Save Changes when you’re done.

Repeat in Live Mode

If you first connected in test or sandbox mode, you’ll need to repeat this connection process once you switch your store to live mode.

Under the General tab, disable Test Mode. Then go back to the PayPal tab and select Connect to PayPal in live mode.

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Already Connected? Reconnect for More Methods

This isn’t the legacy gateway migration. If you’re coming from PayPal Standard, Express, Pro, or Payments Advanced, see upgrading from other PayPal gateways instead. This section is for stores already using this gateway.

The expanded set of PayPal payment methods is applied when a store connects to PayPal. If you connected your PayPal account before these methods were added, you won’t see them until you reconnect, even after updating the plugin.

That includes stores that migrated off the legacy gateways years ago. Completing that migration doesn’t exempt you from this step.

To turn them on:

1. Make sure you’re running the latest version of Easy Digital Downloads. Go to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard and select update now if an update is available. The newer payment methods ship with the plugin, so they can’t appear on an older version.
2. Go to Downloads » Settings » Payments » PayPal and select Disconnect from PayPal.
3. Connect again using the same PayPal account you were using before.
4. PayPal re-establishes the connection and returns the list of payment methods your account supports. Enable the ones you want, then select Save Changes.
5. Visit your checkout page and confirm the new options appear.

Watch for popups. Some browsers block the PayPal window during reconnection. If nothing opens, allow popups for your site and try again.

Reconnecting with the same account doesn’t affect your existing payments or subscriptions.

Testing Your PayPal Setup

The PayPal Sandbox lets you set up test accounts and run the full purchase process in Easy Digital Downloads with the PayPal gateway. No real charges take place, and you can use it for as long as you like.

Confirm you’re in test mode

Go to Downloads » Settings » Payments » General and check whether Test Mode is enabled at the top of the page. Your store is in test mode when that box is checked.

Create a PayPal Sandbox account

Visit developer.paypal.com and click Log in or Sign Up. You can log in with your existing PayPal account if you have one.

Once logged in, create your sandbox accounts:

1. Go to Testing Tools » Sandbox Accounts.
2. Click Create Account.
3. Select Business, choose the account country, and click Create Account.
4. Click Create Account again, and this time select Personal as the account type.

That gives you two accounts: a Business (merchant) account you’ll connect inside EDD, and a Personal account you’ll use during checkout to simulate a payment.

While you’re on the Sandbox Accounts page, click any account to view or edit it. You can see the default password that was set during creation, or set your own.

Before you go live

Take your store out of Test Mode before you start selling, or none of your sales will be valid. You may also need to connect with your live PayPal account after you deactivate test mode, as described in the Repeat in Live Mode section above.

Checkout Experience

This payment gateway uses PayPal’s modern checkout buttons. Instead of a standard “Purchase” button, your customers see the PayPal buttons at the end of the checkout form, along with any other payment options you’ve enabled, such as Venmo, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Fastlane, Pay Later, and direct credit/debit card payment.

Which buttons actually appear depends on the methods you enabled in Step 3, the capabilities PayPal has approved for your account, and the buyer’s own eligibility.

Fallback IPN

Easy Digital Downloads lets you use a fallback IPN service that handles any scenario where a Webhook event might not reach your website.

To configure the IPN, log in to your PayPal account, hover over the cog in the upper right corner of the screen, then select Account Settings.

Click Notifications on the left side of the screen, then click Update next to Instant Payment Notifications.

If you didn’t have IPN enabled before, you’ll see a Choose IPN Settings button. On the IPN settings page, add your website URL in this format, replacing yoursite.com with your actual website URL:

https://yoursite.com/?edd-listener=eppe

Replace yoursite.com in the link with your actual website URL.

Check the Receive IPN messages (Enabled) box, then click Save.

That’s all there is to it. This now acts as a fallback to the main webhook that the PayPal setup uses when connecting your account.

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Recurring Payments Integration

This PayPal gateway has complete support for the Recurring Payments feature. See our Recurring Payments PayPal setup doc for configuration instructions.

Browser Support

Support is guaranteed for the browsers below. Browsers not on this list may continue to work, but compatibility isn’t guaranteed.

Desktop:

• Chrome version 41 and later
• Firefox version 43 and later
• Safari version 8 and later
• Opera version 12 and later
• Edge version 14 and later

Mobile:

• Chrome version 41 and later
• Firefox version 15 and later
• Safari version 9 and later
• Samsung Internet Browser version 8.2 and later
• Silk Browser version 72 and later

Internet Explorer is no longer supported by PayPal Checkout. Easy Digital Downloads still ships an optional set of IE11 polyfills, but they’re switched off by default as of EDD 3.3.7. If you need them for a specific legacy case, you can opt in with this code:

add_filter( 'edd_load_ie11_polyfills', '__return_true' );

For more information about PayPal Checkout browser requirements, see PayPal’s Browser Support page.

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Upgrading from Other PayPal gateways

Upgrading to the new PayPal gateway is simply connecting, following the configuration steps above, then disabling the old gateway(s).

If you previously used one of our old/legacy PayPal integrations, such as PayPal Standard, PayPal Express, PayPal Pro, or PayPal Payments Advanced, upgrading means connecting to this gateway using the steps above, then disabling the old gateway.

Those legacy integrations aren’t compatible with EDD 3.0 and later, and they no longer receive updates. Many of them are deprecated on PayPal’s end. If your store is running EDD 3.x, this gateay is the PayPal integration you’re looking to use.

How does the upgrade work?

Until you connect to this gateway, payments continue processing through whichever gateway you had selected. When you connect, use the exact same PayPal account you used before. Once the connection is complete and you’ve enabled the new gateway, payments start processing this integration. Disable the old gateway so that only the new one is active.

Inside PayPal itself, you won’t notice a difference. Payments still arrive the same way. Only the checkout experience on your site changes.

What about Recurring Payments?

If you use our Recurring Payments feature, you can switch to the new PayPal gateway without affecting existing subscriptions. Old subscriptions continue to process and renew as normal. A few things to be aware of:

1. Once the new gateway is set up, uncheck the old gateway from the list of enabled payment gateways.
2. For PayPal Express and Pro, keep your old PayPal IPN configured (Express / Pro IPN Doc). Subscriptions created with the old gateway keep using the IPN to tell EDD about renewal payments. PayPal Standard doesn’t rely on IPN because the URL is hard-set, but if you don’t use your PayPal account with multiple stores, we still recommend setting it in case PayPal changes how this works (Standard IPN Doc). It’s not required.
3. If you’re using PayPal Express or PayPal Pro, keep that feature activated. The gateway itself shouldn’t be enabled under Downloads » Settings » Payments, but the plugin should stay active so it can continue processing old IPNs.

Using Aelia Currency Switcher?
PayPal needs to be re-added in Aelia Payment Gateways Settings for the currencies your site supports. Otherwise PayPal won’t be available as a gateway at checkout.

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FAQs on PayPal Setup