How to Setup PayPal Standard in WooCommerce Store?

WooCommerce is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for setting up online store. You can accept payments from third-party payment systems like Stripe, credit cards, direct bank transfer, PayPal, etc. Among all other payment processing options, PayPal is the most easy and convenient way for buyers as it offers seamless refund and buyer protection. People paying through PayPal always have peace of mind that they can get the money back by dispute if needed. As a seller, you can offer a full freedom for buyers to increase their confidence level of buying and retuning back to your store. If you are not using PayPal, here is a simple guide on how to setup PayPal Standard in WooCommerce store.

PayPal and WooCommerce

WooCommerce offers two versions of PayPal integration. The latest WooCommerce plugin only allows you to accept PayPal payments directly on the site. This means the users will not be redirected to PayPal when purchasing. You need to setup this through an add-on plugin called “WooCommerce PayPal Payments”. However, this setup will create lot of problems and may not work in most cases.

If the latest WooCommerce PayPal setup does not work for you, then you have an alternate option. WooCommerce version earlier than 5.5 was having an in-built payment processing called PayPal Standard. This will take the users to PayPal site during the checkout process to finish the payment. Though this is the most convenient way, latest WooCommerce plugin does not support this and by default disable this from the core. However, you can manually enable this option by adding a new function in your functions.php file. In this article, we will explain using this method as it works seamlessly but we are not explaining testing with sandbox and other stuffs.

WooCommerce Payment Settings Page

First, let’s see how the payments section in WooCommerce will look by default”

• Login to your WordPress admin panel and navigate to “WooCommerce > Settings” menu.
• Go to “Payments” section to view all the available payment options for you.
• You will see “WooCommerce Payments” as a recommended option by along with few other options. (Do not click on install button against WooCommerce Payments, this will install an additional add-on plugin which needs WordPress.com Jetpack account).
• As you see, there are no options available for integrating PayPal.

Why Not WooCommerce PayPal Payments?

If you want to use the latest WooCommerce PayPal Payments, then go to “Plugins > Add New” section. Search for the “WooCommerce PayPal Payments” plugin to install and activate it on your site.

After that navigate back to WooCommerce payments settings page and you will see additional options for PayPal.

There are multiple reasons why this setup will not work:

• The entire process is so complicated that you need to configure each button which is not user friendly.
• Card processing option will not be available or all PayPal account holders.
• As we have tested, this will completely slow down your website as PayPal objects loading on your site will take long time. You can see remove unused JavaScript and render blocking issues in Google PageSpeed Insights due to PayPal.

Subscriptions and other options may not work as users complained in the plugin’s support page.

Setup PayPal Standard in WooCommerce

Do not worry, you can still setup PayPal Standard on your WooCommerce store and accept payments seamlessly. Here is how you can setup PayPal Standard in WooCommerce:

• Go to “Appearance > Theme File Editor” section in your admin dashboard.
• Select your current theme from the “Select theme to edit” dropdown.
• After selecting your current theme, select functions.php file.
• Add the following code at the end of your file and click “Update File” button.

//Activate PayPal Standard
add_filter( 'woocommerce_should_load_paypal_standard', '__return_true' );

• It will look like below in the theme file editor.

• Go to “WooCommerce > Settings > Payments” section and now you will see a “PayPal Standard – PayPal” option.

Remember, changing theme’s file is not recommended as the changes will be wiped off when you update the theme. To avoid this, you can either use child theme or use plugins like Code Snippets to insert new functions.

Setup PayPal Standard

Unlike the latest PayPal payments, it is super easy to setup PayPal Standard in WooCommerce.

• To get started, click on the “Setup” button” showing against PayPal Standard under payments section.
• On the settings page that appears first check the box showing as “Enable PayPal Standard”.
• Next enter your PayPal account email address in “PayPal email” text box.

• Scroll down to “Advanced options” section and check “Enable IPN email notifications” option.
• Make sure to enter the “Receiver email” as your primary PayPal address. This will help to avoid IPN validation failures after the payment is processed.
• If required, changed the invoice prefix from “WC_” to anything that matches your brand name (you can also generate invoice from PayPal if required).

• Scroll down to bottom and click “Save changes” button.

That’s all, now you have successfully setup PayPal Standard on your site. There is no need to login to your PayPal account for verifying the connection. Though personal account will also work with this setup, it is better to use PayPal business account as some countries may restrict receiving/paying money using personal account. If you want to test with sandbox, check “Enable PayPal sandbox” option and test using your PayPal developer account.

Final Words

Unfortunately, WooCommerce uses different terms like WooCommerce Payments, WooCommerce PayPal Payments and PayPal Standard for accepting payments. For PayPal, you can enable PayPal Standard as explained above and there are no additional add-on or verification required for this process. As mentioned, PayPal Standard will redirect users to PayPal site for logging in during checkout. Other than this it works simple and also easy to setup.