1 / 25
Jun 2023

We've had several reports since yesterday about PayPal checkout sporadically getting hung up or stalling out at various points. We have reported the issue to PayPal MTS (Merchant Technical Support), so they can look into it further. We're also seeing other reports around the Web since yesterday about trouble with PayPal involving other services unrelated to ours.

In testing this with the affected sellers' products, we're only sporadically getting a stall-out, and at varying points -- sometimes after clicking the Pay Using PayPal button in our cart, sometimes upon arriving at the PayPal checkout site and attempting to log into our PayPal account, sometimes after clicking the Complete Purchase button on the PayPal checkout site -- while at other times everything works just fine.

Once a buyer clicks the PayPal checkout button in their cart, at that point we're just waiting on the PayPal checkout site to respond, so we can finish redirecting the buyer there to pay for their order. As such, a stall at that point indicates PayPal's end isn't responding yet, and of course anything happening after the redirection to checkout would be entirely at PayPal's end.

All of that suggests some issue with PayPal's system -- possibly just high traffic causing their site to bog down sometimes, or perhaps some other emergent glitch -- hence our opening that ticket about it with PayPal MTS (Case # 12440024), who have now acknowledged the issue at their and confirmed they now have developers assigned to resolve it. We'll followup here to confirm if and when they say the issue is resolved at their end.

  • created

    Jun '23
  • last reply

    Jun '23
  • 24

    replies

  • 1.3k

    views

  • 13

    users

  • 20

    likes

  • 5

    links

BTW, handy tip:
If you use any of the other payment services we support7 for direct card payment*, you can temporarily disable the PayPal checkout option in your shopping cart until PayPal resolves the issue at their end.

To disable PayPal checkout in your cart, from your E-junkie Dashboard go to Manage Seller Account > Edit Profile > More Payment Options, then untick the box to Show PayPal in shopping cart and click the green Submit button to apply changes.

Then when we update this forum post to confirm PayPal has informed us they've fixed the issue, you can simply go back in there and tick that box again to re-enable the PayPal checkout button in your shopping cart.

* If you're not already using one of those but would like to, Stripe7 seems to be the quickest to get approved for at their end, then integrating that with your E-junkie account only takes a minute or two.

This afternoon we inquired again on that ticket we opened with PayPal MTS about this issue (Case # 12440024), asking for a status update or ETA on a resolution. They replied an hour ago, but only to confirm their Devs are still working on the issue but do not yet have any estimate for how soon it will be fixed. :confused:

It seems you can bypass the "Complete Purchase" problem for now by request shipping address information from buyer during checkout. We are selling digit goods, do not need shipping address. But, it solved the problem temporarily. I tested it out at my website https://www.jerrycards.com5

Thanks for that workaround tip!

Sellers who want to try that can edit each product and tick the box to Require buyer's shipping address in the product settings; if you don't see that while editing your product, make sure the box is ticked to Show Advanced Settings at the top of the product settings screen.

We infer this workaround means the problem may only affect transactions that do not require any shipping address, so we've added that to our ticket with PayPal MTS in hopes that may help them identify and resolve the reason for the problem.

I really hope this will be solved soon. I have currently deactivated PayPal but it's far from ideal. And editing over 60+ products to incorporate shipping calculations is not ideal either, especially considering that I sell digital products only.

I'm curious if this issue is somehow linked to the "UPS Ground shipping causes cart to stall" issue? It seems like requesting a shipping address has an effect and I'm wondering if the two problems are interconnected?

The two problems are unrelated. The UPS Ground issue occurs in our shopping cart when the buyer attempts to calculate shipping charges before they proceed to checkout, whereas the PayPal issue sporadically occurs at any point after the buyer has clicked through to PayPal checkout, usually on the PayPal checkout site itself when they click the final Complete Purchase button there to actually pay.

Latest word from PayPal MTS so far is that their developers are still working on fixing the problem at their end.

Do you have a contact at PayPal? My sales have virtually stopped. This isn't a side gig for me - it's how I make my living.

I am in the same situation because i sell half stock, and half just sent by email, if i add a shipping address it I going to charge my email sales postage and packaging, my sale have dried up too in since Friday, and this is my main way of earning too :frowning:

This has got to be hurting PayPal? To see all of their digital sales drop off for something so simple..

Still no status updates from PayPal MTS today so far. :frowning2:

I don't think hassling their support agents about it further will help, as they're certainly already harried (just as we are) from the massive volume of complaints they must be getting about it, and they're not the same people responsible for actually fixing the problem at their end, who must be feeling considerable pressure from their colleagues in support and management as well.

I did happen to find this thread in PayPal's own community forum, by which we can see that many other merchants using other ecommerce platforms entirely (or even using PayPal's own purchase button codes) are being affected by this same problem, starting last week and continuing right up to today:

Can you please contact me directly. I don't think my continuing this discussion in a public forum is what you want.

I think its time I started using Stripe. I hosted a 50% off summer sale to our 5000 customers and made 1 sale.

The 1 sale made it even more confusing tbh.

Fingers crossed this is resolved soon and thank you E-Junkie for keeping us updated.

What worked best for me was leaving the PayPal option up (even if not working), and signing up for Stripe (which verified me in a minute). PayPal is a known trusted option, and that confers trust upon the unbranded Stripe route (better than if there is no PayPal option listed at checkout). I've since checked the option for Shipping info on my products to get PayPal working, but I'm afraid that the additional friction at checkout is sub-optimal (though I did make a PayPal sale today). The shipping entry UI makes the cart design feel a bit cluttered (forcing the pay buttons down).

Still no updates from MTS so far today. :frowning2:

We've started noticing some mentions that the problem might only affect buyers who try to pay with their PayPal account, but it's not clear if this is consistent or just coincidental, as the PayPal checkout problem itself is sporadic, affecting some purchase attempts but not others.

As such, you might advise affected buyers to try the Pay with Debit or Credit Card button (or this may say Guest Checkout in some scenarios) on the PayPal checkout site, rather than logging into their PayPal account to pay. The availability of that card-payment option on the PayPal checkout site depends on your own PayPal account type and settings; see details here4. However, note that card-payment option will only work with cards that are not already linked to a PayPal account.

We're also noticing some mentions that the "require shipping" workaround may no longer work for some sellers, and other sellers have now reported that our Buy Now buttons for PayPal are working for them when the PayPal checkouts for their Cart buttons weren't working, so that may be something else to try.

Again, it's not clear if these findings are consistent or just coincidental due to the sporadic nature of the problem, along with PayPal probably testing various changes at their end to try fixing the problem, but just thought we'd pass along those tips in case it might help anyone.

I was having problems with both guest checkout as well as Paypal checkout. The work-around with the shipping address option seemed to work for a few people that had contacted me about their checkout failures. Unknown if it's working for everyone. So, I signed up for Stripe this morning. And with Ejunkie's clear instructions was able to easily integrate it as a payment option in my shopping cart. I'm not tech savvy but the whole process took me only about 15 minutes. Easy. I can breathe a little easier now having that second pay option. Not happy with Paypal right now. I'll never know how much business I lost by customers getting frustrated with the checkout failures. If I didn't have a working business loan through them, I would ditch them completely.